CHAPTER VI: THE RELATIONS OF THE CANONICAL POWER AND THE
POLITICAL POWER

Before passing on to the other great divisions of the jurisdictional power we
must linger a while longer over the study of the canonical power. If the
declaratory power is the higher, the canonical power, which brings it into
immediate touch with temporal things, is the more deeply affected by their
complexity and contingence. The documents of the ecclesiastical magisterium that
rule its exercise have, in every age, to reckon with the contemporary state of
cultural development. The field of its influence is therefore variable;
sometimes, as in the early Christian era, it seems to keep itself well within
its legitimate frontiers, and at others, as in the Middle Ages, it appears to
overstep them. We must first define its essential exigencies, and determine the
nature of its relations with political power and political society. That,
however, will not suffice. We shall still have to discuss, endless as the task
may seem to be, the legitimacy of many measures taken by the medieval Popes in
the name of their powers, measures that find mention in the canonical
collections and were then turned to account in the theological Summae:
transference of the Imperial dignity, deposition of apostate princes,
suppression of heresy, organization of Crusades. If we maintain that these
measures were justified, there seems to be a danger that those who thus work to
save the full authority of the canonical power entertain the secret hope that
one day all its medieval applications will be revived. And if, on the contrary,
we disavow these measures, and consider them to have been usurpations on the
part of the spiritual power, it seems as if we shall have to agree that in thus
falling in with the methods of the kingdoms of this world the Church lost sight
of her transcendence, yielded to the third temptation rejected by Our Lord,
allowed her sanctity to be eclipsed during long centuries and, by ambition,
weakness or ignorance, betrayed the mission that Christ had entrusted to her.
Neither the theologian who simply asserts the divine character of the canonical
power, nor the historian content to plead extenuating circumstances for an
attitude he admits to be regrettable, will ever resolve these grave questions.
Let us make an attempt to resolve them on their own merits. We shall in the
first place recall (1) the analogical character of the canonical jurisdiction. I
shall indicate (2) the essential claims of the Church in her relations with the
State. Then (3) we shall set out to describe the normal role of the Church in a
secular Christendom. And finally (4) we shall discuss more at length the role of
the Church in medieval Christendom.

1. The Analogical Character Of The Canonical Jurisdiction

1. The Church's Likeness To Civil Society Analogical Only

Since the Church has no other end than eternal life and union with the divine
Persons, we have refused to distinguish in her first, a specific element by
reason of which she is supernatural and possesses the powers of order and
magisterium, and then a generic element by reason of which she is social and
visible, possessing like other societies the power of legislating, judging and
punishing. The Church is, at once and through and through, both supernatural and
visible: first by reason of the power of order and the declaratory power, next
by reason of her canonical power which contains the legislative, judicial, and
coercive powers within itself. Her resemblance to political societies is
analogical only, not univocal. Hence the resemblance of her canonical power to
the political power is also only analogical; and that of her legislative,
judiciary and coercive powers to the legislative, judiciary, and coercive powers
of the State, is merely analogical likewise.

2. The Original Characters Of The Canonical Power

It follows, as I have already pointed out, that the canonical power can
propose even speculative and doctrinal statements to the faithful, who will then
be bound to give them an intellectual assent; that if it more especially governs
exterior acts, it can nevertheless prescribe the interior acts of faith and
religion that should lie behind them; and that the maxim De internis non judicat
praetor is not to be applied to the canonical domain simply as it stands.[446]

It further results that the means of coercion open to the Church to bring her
rebellious children back into the ways of obedience and love will not be
identical with those used by the temporal society. Since the Church is a society
which is not of this world, a spiritual society, ecclesiastical penalties will
be always spiritual by reason of their end. But since the Church is a society
which is in this world, a visible society, she can touch delinquents in their
visible, temporal and material goods; but, even then, such penalties, remaining
spiritual in aim, will be distinct from those inflicted by civil society. They
will have another measure; they will be lighter and will not, for example, go as
far as the shedding of blood and the death penalty.

The same remarks apply to the means of extending and defending the Church.
The sole means of conquest proper to the Church as such, is the preaching (and
living) of the Gospel; neither constraint nor war is allowable here. The sole
means of defence proper to the Church as such, and arising from her nature as
the visible Kingdom of God among men, remain spiritual in measure and aim, even
when temporal in themselves. They do not consist in opposing blade to blade,
bloody constraint to bloody constraint: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep
among wolves" (Matt. x. 16); so that if the Church still exists in the
world, if the sheep still live in the midst of wolves, the thing is clearly a
miracle.[447] The only bloodshedding for which the Church, as such, takes the
full and immediate responsibility is that of the martyr. "Then they came up
and laid hands on Jesus, and held him. And behold one of them that were with
Jesus, stretching forth his hand, drew out his sword; and striking the servant
of the High Priest, cut off his ear. Then Jesus saith to him: Put up again thy
sword into its place; for all that take the sword shall perish by the
sword" (Matt. xxvi. 50-52). And we are clearly warned that what applies to
Jesus Himself applies to all His Kingdom: "My kingdom is not of this world.
If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would certainly strive that I
should not be delivered to the Jews: but now"—since they have not done so
it is clear that—"my kingdom is not from hence." (John xviii. 36).

Yet Popes have issued decrees for setting holy wars on foot, and for
compelling princes to hunt down heresy, and I believe that they did so
legitimately. But what I propose to dispute is that they did so in virtue only
of their canonical power, and of essential and permanent exigencies of the
Kingdom of God.

3. The Action Of The Canonical Power Immediate Or Mediate

A further remark. When we speak of the means adopted by the legislative,
judiciary and coercive powers of the Church, we speak first, of course, of those
means which she wields herself, without having recourse to any intermediary. But
we include further certain activities exerted through the medium of the secular
arm; not all such activities indiscriminately, but those only for which the
ecclesiastical power can and ought to bear the full responsibility, those whose
immediate end is the spiritual not the temporal-Christian, Christianity and not
Christendom, activities regulated by the laws of the Church and not by the laws
of the State. The secular power is then functioning as a pure instrument of the
canonical power. Its activity, ordinarily civil, becomes spiritual hic et nunc,
exceptionally, on special occasion; it submerges itself in the activity of the
canonical power, changes its character, becomes lighter and more moderate. On
that account, the secular arm has to renounce the use of the sword. St.
Augustine does not refuse its services to deal with the Donatists, but he
"would not hear of capital punishment; he trembled lest the blood of the
enemies of the Church should flow back upon her and dishonour her."[448]
The Church is the party responsible for these activities, not the secular power:
they are here regarded as pertaining to her "direct power". I shall
reserve the term "indirect power" for another use.[449]

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II. THE ESSENTIAL CLAIMS OF THE CHURCH IN HER RELATIONS WITH THE STATE

The claims of the Church with respect to the State concern on the one hand
the life of the Church herself, and on the other her influence on the State. The
Church has first of all the right and the duty to take root, live and develop in
the bosom of political societies. She has moreover the right and the duty to
exert a sanctifying influence on the life of political societies. Both kinds of
claim are put forward by Leo XIII in the Encyclical Sapientiae Christianae (10th
January 1890): "The Church cannot be indifferent as to the particular laws
which shall rule cities, since it happens only too often that instead of keeping
to the political sphere these laws transgress their due limits and encroach on
ecclesiastical rights. Now God has entrusted the Church with the duty, first of
opposing political measures harmful to religion; and secondly, of bringing all
her zeal to bear to ensure that the laws and institutions of peoples should be
penetrated with the spirit of the Gospel. "Let us consider, briefly, each
of these claims.

1 The Church's Need To Safeguard Her Own Existence: Defence Of The Spiritual
Order

However great their diversity the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this
world meet on the same territories, not to say in the same men, and claim them
for their respective ends. How are we to conceive this partition—first within
the man himself, and then among his worldly and temporal goods?

A. Mans Twofold Motion Towards God: Through The Temporal Community And
Through The Spiritual Community

The law of all created natures, be they physical particles or living germs,
is to tend towards their act, their end, their perfection, their good. This good
is a distant likeness of the divine good; and so, in tending to their own
perfection they are also tending blindly—and of course with numberless
failures—to God. Now if this is so, then man, who is not exempt from the
general law, ought likewise to be constantly moving towards his end and his
good, that is towards God, in a truly human way, in which the failures will take
on the nature of sins.[450] In moving in this properly human manner towards the
fulfilment and fullness of his nature, man will find himself bound to enter into
relations with other persons and to live a communal life; first of all in the
basic community of the family, which is ordained for the handing on of life, and
is itself involved in civil communities, wider, more perfect, more "divine
"ordered to the unfolding and flowering of human life [451]—communities
whose influence will penetrate the family community and lift it gradually above
itself. The supreme civil community alone will have full moral personality, will
be perfect; not in the sense that it can isolate itself from all others and tend
to some impossible autarchy, but in the sense that it can treat with the others
as an equal with equals. At each step of this progressive introduction to
community life man is moving towards God.

And yet the human person is too noble a thing to be wholly received into and
absorbed by a community. It is but a part of himself that moves towards God by
way of the family, and another part by the various civil communities; and there
remains an element in him that can move towards God only directly, that concerns
no one but God and himself. That is why St. Thomas distinguishes three parts in
moral philosophy: first the "monastic", which rules the activity of
man in his singleness; then the "economic, "which rules the activity
of the domestic community; and then "politics" which rules the
activity of the civil community.[452] He writes elsewhere that the good of man
as man, which consists in the knowledge of truth and the regulation of the lower
appetites, is distinct from the good of man as citizen, which consists in social
intercourse; that the virtue that makes a good man is distinct from the virtue
that makes a good citizen.[453] Thus the community has its rights over the man,
and its place on the road by which he moves towards God (and there we have the
part given over to Caesar, although for God's sake); yet it must never become
totalitarian, never wholly absorb the man, in whom is an irreducible greatness,
mysterious and referable immediately to God, on which the civil community has no
right to lay hands (and there we have God's exclusive part): and it is inasmuch
as it protects the mystery of the independence of the human person that private
property too becomes inviolable. "The man," says St. Thomas, "is
not ordained to the political community according to all that he is or has. . .
. But all that man is, all that he does, all that he has, ought to be referred
to God."[454] Without even quitting the plane of philosophy it thus becomes
evident that the civil community is of itself unfitted to rule the entire being
of the men it brings together; it rules only their life as citizens and the
inner reserves of their nature lie beyond its grasp. It is precisely in virtue
of this part of themselves, the part that remains inaccessible to the civil
community and by which they are capable of God by grace, [455] that men are
called to enter into a higher community.

The same men, composed of soul and body, whom the State, on account of their
natural capacities, claims for civil life, are claimed by the Church, on account
of a more inward obediential capacity, for the life of the heavenly city, the
life "of this Jerusalem, whose Prince is God, whose citizens are the angels
and all the saints whether reigning in glory in their fatherland or still
pilgrims on earth, according to the word of the Apostle [Eph. ii. 19]: "You
are fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God."[456] It is
a supernatural city which Christ has begun to gather up around Himself and
incorporate into His own Body, a visible extension of His being, of which He
remains today the Head though He is ascended into Heaven and cannot corporeally
touch our miseries (save under the eucharistic veils). He now continues by way
of the sacramental power (made visible by the sacraments that confer it) [457]
to endow it with the life of grace and the infused virtues: "for, that man
should be a member of this City his nature does not suffice, it needs to be
elevated by God's grace; and it is clear that the virtues that are in man
inasmuch as he is a member of that City, cannot be acquired by his natural
powers. Wherefore they are not caused in us by our own acts but infused into us
by the divine gift."[458] And He continues by the jurisdictional power
(also made visible by reason of the designation that confers it) to dispense the
truth that nourishes its contemplation and directs its action. Of the two forms
of the jurisdictional power it is the second, the canonical, that most often
comes in contact with the political power. It takes the necessary regular
disciplinary measures concerning matters of a spiritual nature (whether wholly
so, and these are the most numerous, or only partially so—"mixed"
matters, such as the effects of marriage, education, etc.); and it takes
accidental disciplinary measures concerning matters essentially civil but
becoming spiritual hic et nunc, as touching the altar. The Church intervenes
here to defend spiritual goods in the strict measure demanded by this defence;
she herself takes the concrete initiative of the materially political (but
formally spiritual) act; and her intervention may be effected by "civic
Catholic action"—this is properly Catholic action and not political
action, since its object is to defend, for the sake of the spiritual, values
that are proper to the city of God, though involved in the temporal order.[459]
Thus the same men are drawn into the orbit of two great visible communities, of
two societies, each being perfect and supreme in its sphere, whose specific
ends, jurisdictional powers, and formal bonds, are profoundly distinct. The Pope
alone could be an exception; but if, with a view to safe-guarding the free
exercise of his spiritual power, he voluntarily assumes the charge of a
political principality, as in fact he did for a long period, the line of
partition between the spiritual and the temporal will run through his own heart.

How do these great communities confront each other within the soul of a man?
Are they contraries, and is it the law of each to devour the other and
assimilate it? There are some who are so persuaded. Those of them who recognize
the divine greatness of the Church, would endow her with a mission to absorb the
State.[460] Others, much more numerous, want the State to swallow up the Church:
it is to this that totalitarianism, whether it flatters or persecutes the
Church, whether it be pagan, or atheist, communist, racist or statist, tends of
its nature. A third reaction, anarchist this time, would consist in proclaiming
the radical illegitimacy of every social hierarchy, divine or human, and in
involving the human person in an unbridled revolt.[461] All these solutions do
violence to the human being and hurry him on to catastrophe. It is enough to
respect the depth of the mystery in man to understand that he has to move
towards God in two different ways. By reason of his natural powers, actualized
by his acquired virtues, he will move towards his connatural ends, and will
therefore enter into civil communities. By reason of the obediential potency of
his spirit, actualized by grace and the infused virtues, he will acquire wings
on which he may rise to the city of the angels, of Christ, and of the divine
Persons. He will walk and fly at one and the same time; and in this there will
be no incompatibility. Indeed, he will walk the more surely on the earth when
his love draws him towards heaven, and be the better citizen when fully
Christian; it will be the mission of the Church to Christianize civil life. The
earthly city and the heavenly city, the State and the Church, divide man's
inward life between them. The law of an essential duality, from which he will
only escape by death, divides his being in this world. The division is grievous,
no doubt, but in itself salutary. It does not aim at vainly tearing man apart
and producing sterile and unending conflicts. It is meant to bring the various
powers of his soul by different routes to the same God. It was always present,
but it only came to light on the day when the Saviour uttered, as it were in
passing, the famous words: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things that
are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Matt. xxii. 21):
words which sanctioned the just rights of Caesar while creating the rights of
the Church, and which were to overturn the age-long totalitarianism of the pagan
world. St. Augustine drew attention to it forcibly.[462] It is a homicidal folly
and an offence to the Gospel to want to change the distinction between Church
and State into opposition. The conflicts that have arisen between them in the
course of history are accidental, not of the true essence of either.

B. The Respective Dominions Of Church And State: The Church, By Nature, Not
Territorial

Church and State meet on the same territories. How define the dominium of
each?

Man's dominion over external things—a feeble reflection of the divine
dominion over the being and the activity of all creation—is the power, flowing
from his intelligence and his will, of using them for his own ends, as if they
had been made for him.[463]

It can take two forms. First there is the dominion inherent in the human
person, the use of external things which each individual person has the right to
make for his own ends. There we have personal property, the dominium humile.
Then there is the dominion of the civil power, the use of external things which
the civil power has the right to make for the common good. There we have the
high dominion, the dominium altum. It is not meant to supplant personal property
but to make it more secure, more fruitful, better distributed and better
regulated. And if the State may itself become proprietor of certain domains and
non-movables, of certain industries and public services, this is only the more
efficiently to favour the autonomy and personal property of its subjects.

What dominion does the Church claim over these external things? Exactly that
which is needful for the complete fulfilment of her spiritual mission.

First of all, to safeguard the free exercise of his sovereign spiritual
jurisdiction, the Pope will have the canonical right—subject of course to all
the claims of justice—to a civil principate, whereby he will possess, to the
exclusion of all other political power, the dominium altum over a portion of
territory, to be administered by him as by any other temporal prince. It is
clear that this principate, standing alongside other temporal principates to
guarantee the independence of the pontifical power, will not of its nature tend
to supplant these others; any more than the movable or immovable property of the
State will tend of its nature to supplant other personal properties.

Save only for this temporal principate, which does not enter into her
structure but is annexed to it from without, the Church as such cannot without
usurpation claim dominium altum over any territory. It is not her business, but
that of political governments, to look to the security, regulation and
development of personal property. In this sense she ought to refuse, as Jesus
did, the kingdoms of this world and their glory. A territory, a kingdom, may be
added to her from without, but she remains intrinsically and of her very nature
a non-territorial society, a society without a fatherland. She must neither
retreat into some determinate region as into an entrenched camp, nor extend the
frontiers of the pontifical state to those of her mission to all mankind. Even
in the Middle Ages that was never her ideal; [464] and if the canonical power
then penetrated deeply into political life, this was not, as we shall see, in
virtue of any essential and permanent claim of the Church, but of a particular
conception of Christian political order. This conception was legitimate, I hold,
for the epoch in question, but is not bound up with the life of the Church.

If the Church is essentially non-territorial she must needs have her being in
the territories of others. In this sense she will dwell on the earth as a
stranger. Like the God who lies hid in the Host, she too, a supernatural person
of whom the world is not worthy, will ask only of States, in order that she may
live with them, this dominium humile, this right of personal property, which
they cannot abolish without injustice. But this right will then be doubly
inviolable: first, as personal property, so that they cannot despoil her of it
without tyranny, without overturning the equity they exist to defend; and again
as religious property, so that they cannot take it away without sacrilege and
outrage on religion.[465] Thus the Church, though she is greater than the
states, is yet subject to them in one respect. She is bound to obey their just
laws. The theologians have recognized this, [466] and Cajetan gives it precise
point in a celebrated text.[467] She will be more or less at their mercy, and
they will find it easy to despoil her, to rob her of the means of subsistence,
to stifle her; it has in fact been her fate to be constantly dispossessed and as
often rehabilitated. But clearly, they cannot behave in this way without calling
in question the rights on which they themselves are based. Here again, these
conflicts between Church and State remain accidental; only by a violation of the
nature of things could they be made essential.

2. The Christianization Of Civil Life By The Church: Illumination Of The
Temporal Order

A. The Spiritual Connected With Some Temporal Activities Simply On Account Of
Their Existence In A Human Subject; With Others, On Account Of Their Content

In coming to divinize the inmost depths of a man, to make him a citizen of
heaven, a member of Christ, a living temple for the divine Persons, grace and
the infused virtues make their influence felt throughout the whole range of his
temporal activity, and speed his progress towards his political and properly
human ends. The plane of spiritual activity remains clearly distinct from the
plane of temporal activity, even when this is directed and penetrated by the
spirit of the Gospel. To the first plane belongs the work of the infused virtues
and the things of the interior life looking directly to God. To the second
belong the work of the acquired virtues and the things of the cultural life,
notably those of political life which are directly Caesar's concern, but for
God's sake. "Let every soul be subject to higher powers. For there is no
power but from God. . . Therefore he that resisteth the power, resisteth the
ordinance of God. . . Wherefore be subject of necessity, not only for wrath but
also for conscience sake,": so writes St. Paul (Rom. xiii. 1-5), who here
gives us the full meaning of the Reddite Caesari. The planes of the spiritual
and of the temporal are in themselves different, but they cannot be separated.
"One is subordinate to the other; the temporal as such needs to be vivified
by the spiritual; the common good of civilization demands of itself to be
referred to the common good of life eternal, which is God Himself. On the one
plane as on the other, my work will only be well done if I have, in regard to
the object in view, the necessary competence and the needed instruments: but
even when I act as a citizen of another city than the Church of Christ, the
Christian life and truth should permeate my activity from within, should be the
living soul and direction of all the material, whether of knowledge or means of
realisation, that I bring into play; and this whatever be the object of my work,
whether it is, as in planting a vine or building a house, one which belongs in
itself to a technique independent of the Christian faith, or, as in things of
the social and political sphere, one where, however large the part played by
technical elements, the ethical order predominates, and hence one that
intrinsically depends on the higher principles assigned by Christian faith and
the Christian wisdom that comes from above."[468]

We need not fear to push the debate too far. The general question of the
subordination of the temporal to the spiritual, of the profane to the sacred, is
evidently wider than the more particular question of the jurisdictional
relations of Church and State. It is the whole field of temporal life that is
due to fall under the attraction of the whole field of spiritual life. But, as
we have just seen, the activities of the temporal life can be disposed into two
groups.

In the first we shall put all those activities which, in themselves, do not
directly involve ethical and contemplative values: gardening, cooking, building
canals and aeroplanes, studying algebra and the sciences—in the sense in which
science is opposed to wisdom [469]—and so forth. It is not by reason of their
content but solely on account of their existence in a human subject redeemed by
the blood of the cross and bound to direct all his acts to eternal life, that
these temporal activities are touched by the breath of the spirit.[470]

In the second group we shall put activities which, over and above all
technical and scientific values, bring into play of themselves the highest of
human values, the values of ethics and wisdom. Such are social, political and
philosophical activities. It is not simply on account of their existence in a
subject wayfaring towards eternity, but also by reason of their very content, of
their specific object, that these activities should receive influence and
regulation from the spiritual order. And what will be the effect of this
influence and regulation? First, it will tend to heal, to rectify the deviations
that are bound to occur in human temporal activity, since it comes from
creatures fallible in their own nature and wounded by their revolt against
grace, so that they pursue the good and the true with diminished powers, even
when this good and true are, in themselves, proportioned to their nature,
connatural.[471] Innumerable errors, philosophical, moral, economic, political,
cultural—concerning the place of the human person in the universe, how he is
to attain his last end, his multiple social relations, the use to be made of
worldly goods—are brought to light and corrected by the healing function of
revealed truth and divine grace. That is not all. The influence of the spiritual
not only rectifies the defects of natural activities; it permeates them through
and through and gives them tone, infuses them with new sap, and this without in
any way removing them from their own plane and their proper laws; even in their
own specific sphere—that of philosophical research, economic and political
organization, artistic invention—it operates to sublimate them, [472] to give
them a new splendour which is the proper effect of Christianity; so that we can
indeed have a Christian philosophy, a Christian economics and politics, a
Christian art, and, more generally, a Christian culture—Christian, that is, in
its inner inspiration, and in the way in which it faces the problems of life in
time. In thus impregnating with its influence the activities which flow from the
acquired virtues and which are specified by ends that are immediately cultural,
Christianity communicates its own impetus, so that they march with a surer,
quicker, lighter step towards their own cultural ends; one can say of them what
the Vulgate says of those who hope in the Lord: "they shall take wings as
eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint"
(Isa. xl. 31).

B. Cultures Illuminated By The Kingdom Of God; But The Cultural Work Thus
Sublimated Itself Outside The Kingdom

Should we attribute these spiritual influences which orientate temporal
things to a last end, rectify and invigorate them, to the temporal or to the
spiritual order, to the Kingdom of God, or to the world of culture?

Formally considered they belong to the Kingdom of God. They affect the world
of culture, the philosophic, economic, social, political and artistic life of a
people, but they do so as an analogical cause which remains transcendent to its
effects. The ray of grace and truth which falls on a culture and operates to
heal its wounds and sublimate it, belongs indeed to the Kingdom of God. It is as
it were an overflow from that Kingdom, tending to rectify and inspire the stuff
and environment of a world in which other influences also—those of man, those
of the devil—play their part. So that a culture, a civilization, even
Christian, can be said to belong to the Kingdom of God not properly but only in
a certain respect, only to the extent to which it receives the rectifications
and illuminations we have mentioned.

So then, while the spiritual influences affecting a culture belong formally,
and in themselves, to the Kingdom of God, the cultural work itself on which
these influences fall is, properly speaking, exterior to the Kingdom.[473] It
belongs to the temporal sphere. It derives immediately from human energies and
resources, from acquired virtues and habits, which may be aided and vivified by
the spiritual but function here as temporal agents and for temporal ends.

The temporal should subordinate itself, as I have said, to the spiritual, not
to abdicate, not to renounce its own nature, not to allow itself to be absorbed;
but, on the contrary, to save its true temporal nature, so that, thanks to the
purifying and elevating influence of the spiritual, it may tend of itself to its
own better temporal development; as the flora and fauna of a country feel the
benefit of a favourable climate without in any way being withdrawn from the laws
of vegetative and sensitive life. From the standpoint of efficient causality we
might say that spiritual energy acts on the temporal, as a principal cause of
higher rank acts on lower principal causes; it penetrates and elevates them.
From the standpoint of final causality we might say that the temporal is ordered
to the spiritual as an intermediate end might be, which, while having its own
native dignity, is nevertheless referred to a higher and ampler end. This, for
example, in animals the vegetative functions (respiration, nutrition,
reproduction) are modified and elevated by contact with sensitive life—their
primary value lies in themselves, but they are besides referred to sense
experience, which is something of a higher order. The subordination of the lower
efficient cause to the higher, of the intermediate or infravalent end to the
higher and supravalent, being essential and intrinsic, we can speak of an
essential and intrinsic subordination of the temporal to the spiritual. Thus
subordination is of such a nature that the sources of temporal activity in no
way lose their character as principal causes (lower), so as to be changed into
mere instruments of the spiritual; and that the ends of temporal activity in no
way lose their character as ends (intermediate, infravalent), so as to become
mere means to the spiritual. The distinction, subtle perhaps, but capital,
between a lower principal cause and a mere instrument, and the corresponding
distinction between an intermediate end and a pure means, should never here be
lost sight of; the lower principal cause acts by virtue of its form, of its
nature, the motion it receives being only the condition of its activity; whereas
the pure instrument does not act of itself at all, the motion it receives being
the total cause of its activity. Similarly, the intermediate end is, absolutely
speaking, an end, something desirable for its own sake; it is only in a certain
sense that it is a means, something desirable for the sake of something else;
whereas the pure means is desirable solely for the sake of something else.[474]

C. Temporal Values Sublimated And Values Become Spiritual

In certain circumstances, of course, temporal activities can be treated as
strict instruments of the spiritual; the acquired habits and virtues can
function, with spiritual good in view, as pure instruments of the infused habits
and virtues, and cultural values can be regarded as pure means to the spiritual.
But when that happens the temporal is shorn of its own laws and ends, becomes
itself spiritual so as to be incorporated in the spiritual, converted into the
spiritual, absorbed into the spiritual; natural resources, acquired virtues and
dispositions, things in themselves temporal or cultural—such as churches,
religious houses, benefices, treasures of art, the languages needed for worship
or for preaching, the liturgical chant—all these, on account of the direct use
of them made by the Church and the immediate purposes to which they are
referred, at once become spiritual.

Thus we admit that the acquired virtues and dispositions, psychological
resources, and temporal values in general, can be elevated by the spiritual in
two typically different ways. First—while they are still functioning as
principal second causes, according to their own laws and within their own
sphere, but under the rectifying and illumining influence of the spiritual order
and of the Gospel virtues. We shall then have a Christian philosophy, a
Christian economy, a Christian sociology, a Christian politics, a Christian art,
in short, a culture that is Christian but distinct from the Church and from the
Kingdom of God: Christian culture then being the domain of human and temporal
life restored and inspired by the Gospel, and the Church being the Kingdom of
life divine and eternal. Second, temporal activities and values can function as
pure instruments of the spiritual: they will then have been taken up out of
their own plane to be reintegrated and reabsorbed into the Kingdom of God.

D. The Spiritual Light's Union With The Temporal For The Building Of A
Christian Society

Spiritual influences acting on the temporal for the good of the temporal, to
orientate, inspire and sublimate it, are subject to two phases which ought to be
carefully distinguished.

In the first place, such influences operate by way of men, clerics or laymen
(the latter being bearers of Catholic action, one of whose ends is to
Christianize the temporal human order) who work in the name of the Church and
engage her responsibility; they are acting in their capacity as Christians, as
such, as members of Christ and citizens of the Kingdom of God, to safeguard
certain primordial and permanent temporal values, the radiant centres of
cultural life. The presence of these values appears to be morally necessary to
the normal exercise of the spiritual life itself, in the general run of men.
Thus, in the doctrinal order, the Church takes up on its own account the defence
of certain fundamental truths concerning the nature, life and destiny of man,
concerning social justice, the civic conscience, the rights and duties of
political society, the origin of authority, the unity of the human race and the
solidarity of all men. These truths are in substance temporal—they are
spiritual only for the radiance they receive from Christianity, for the
Christian light [475] that confirms and illuminates them; and they represent a
frame of reference, the touchstone, if you will, by whose aid we may appreciate
and judge the broad tendencies of the world of philosophy, art, and the moral,
social and political sciences. Thus again, but now in the practical order, the
Church takes up on her own account the defence of certain virtues indispensable
in the work of civilisation, virtues such as humanity, friendship, loyalty,
fidelity, justice, clemency, generosity; more generally and more profoundly, she
strives to foster an attitude of soul, a spirit, in which all cultural problems
should be taken up, an attitude, a spirit, which flows from and finds its
highest instance in divine charity, and is capable of marvellously purifying and
elevating the civilizing virtues. Here then is the first way, the first phase,
we have to deal with: the spiritual ray that lights up the temporal here remains
pure, undivided, unalloyed.[476]

Taken at this first stage, the influence of the spiritual is capable of
preparing the Christianization of a culture; it may favour a Christian style in
politics, economics, philosophy and art, impregnating these with Christian
principles and a Christian spirit. But it is essentially incapable of setting a
society on foot, of giving existence to a cultural whole and bringing it to a
successful issue. The construction of a temporal society, the building up of a
civilization, demands activities and means that are properly human. But the men
who set about these temporal tasks, if Christian, if regenerated by grace, will
work as Christians, with a Christian conscience and without even provisionally
setting God and Christ aside.[477] Then appears the second stage, the second
phase of the penetration of the spiritual into the temporal. It is brought about
by Christians dedicated to the maintenance and progress of culture, living in
the midst of the complexities of technical life, who therefore cannot pretend to
engage the authority of the Church; for this transcends all the divergencies,
oppositions, and legitimate conflicts between civilizations. The spiritual
radiance that here falls on the temporal is the more divided and refracted the
more it penetrates the temporal shadows; it demands to be associated with a
multiplicity of ephemeral manifestations of cultural life so as to be embodied
in them and by them; with the various types of political regime, the various
efforts at economic amelioration, the various branches of work and technique,
the various styles of art, the various vocations of peoples and races. Its
destiny is to be broken up so as to enter into partnership with every honest
attempt at cultural improvement, even when these attempts are in opposition to
each other.[478]

Here then are the essential exigencies of the Church anxious to accomplish
her double task, namely to safeguard her own existence, and to Christianize
civil life, to defend the spiritual and to enlighten and inspire the temporal.

These exigencies, thus defined, will not of themselves suffice to account for
the form taken in the Middle Ages by the intervention of the ecclesiastical
authority in political matters. It aimed at fashioning a determinate type of
Christendom, a "sacral, "or "consecrational" Christendom.
This form of intervention, which is not bound up with the essence of the Church,
was justified in its main lines by conditions which we look upon today as having
passed away for ever.

E. The Church, Though Not Of The World, The World’s Salvation

If we reduce the problem of the relations of the Church with the State and,
more generally, with human culture, to its essential elements and permanent
features, it seems that we have to recognize two facts, both incontestable, but
in union a seeming paradox.

First, the Church is so profoundly differentiated from the State, and her
divine ends so completely transcend all merely cultural ends, that the law
ruling their relations can be but a law of distinction; of themselves Church and
State are not in competition and should not conflict.[479] And further, from the
fact that all human activities without exception, each in its own way, should
help to bring about our return to God, the Last End of the whole universe, it is
clear that the activities whose proximate end lies in terrestrial and temporal
goods, have to be ordered, rectified, enlightened and sustained by the
activities whose immediate end lies in heavenly and eternal goods; so that the
spiritual, far from smothering the temporal and impeding its development, will
alone be capable of bringing it to its full completeness; not indeed giving it
existence, "instituere ut sit", [480] but giving it a purified and
sublimated Christian existence, "instituere ut sit perfecte et christiane.
"There we have a received doctrine already found in Augustine [481] and in
the Apologists of the preceding centuries; the Popes of our own day have not
ceased to recall it. It opens the Encyclical Immortale Dei on the Christian
constitution of states: "The Catholic Church, that imperishable handiwork
of our all-merciful God, has for her immediate and natural purpose the saving of
souls and securing of our happiness in heaven. Yet in regard to things temporal
she is the source of benefits as manifold and great as if the chief end of her
existence were to ensure the prosperity of our earthly life. "It is found
again in the Encyclical Ubi Arcano, of the 23rd December 1922, in which Pius XI
writes that the Church "far from diminishing the power of temporal
societies, each legitimate in its place, happily perfects it as grace perfects
nature", and that "if, in virtue of her divine mission, she looks only
to spiritual and imperishable goods, yet by reason of the harmonious
interconnection of all things, her action contributes even to the earthly
happiness of each man and of human society as effectively as if she had been
established expressly to promote it. "In the measure in which it departs
from Christianity the movement of history gets out of control, the higher
cultural values take second place, might gains upon right, the spirit of hatred
supplants the spirit of concord; respect for the human person, the rights of
other classes, of other peoples, of other races are despised; the sanctity of
treaties and of agreements is trampled under foot.[482]

But if the law of the relations of the Church with the State, of the
spiritual life with the cultural life, is a law of concord, we are bound to note
and admit that in point of fact such concord is a very rare achievement, an
equilibrium attainable only with effort, a prize to be won in daily battle.
Hostile forces, veiled or open, work unceasingly against it. They are at work,
not indeed in the Church as such, since she is holy and unstained, but in those
of her children who easily yield to the solicitations of nature, become victims
of error, passion, and sin; they are still more busily at work in social or
political movements, in cultural tendencies, in the very heart of those states
that take their stand on the cult of riches, the pride of life, and all the
other ideologies that thrust aside and despise the holiness of the Gospel. The
revelation of St. Paul on the divine origin of the political power, and its
fundamental harmony with Christianity, is completed by the terrible revelation
of St. John on the diabolical use of the political power as exploited by the
Dragon against the Church, [483] and on the mortal warfare that goes on till the
end of the world between the Woman and the Beast.

F. The Law Of The Duality Of Church And State Valid Only For Time: The
Church's Eventual Re-Absorption Of The World

It is not the diabolic powers alone, nor the forces of concupiscence alone,
that seek to set the Church against the world, grace against nature; there is
something else, more subtle. Even to angelic natures, exempt from all passion
and disorder, divine grace could seem to come as something alien, so that they
could be startled and taken aback when it was proffered and sin made possible
for them.[484] It is not surprising therefore that the Church, which is the
kingdom of grace, should feel in some sense an exile among human societies: that
she should disconcert them by the splendour of her revelation, and frighten them
as soon as she tries to spread her wings. "The neighbourhood of Eternity is
dangerous for the perishable, and that of the Universal for the
particular."[485] There is a reason for this mystery: the law of duality
and accord, which rules the relations of Church and State, of the spiritual
kingdom and the cultural world, is valid only while the Church is in time, still
a kingdom in chrysalis, a crucified kingdom, and the law of her activity is but
a law of sanctification. When she has passed the frontiers of eternity to enter,
as St. Augustine says, the higher City, "the age in which all principality
and power shall vanish", when she has become a kingdom fulfilled, a kingdom
of glory, when the law of her activity has changed into a law of
transfiguration, then there will be no more distinction between the temporal and
the spiritual, because there will no longer be our time, nor our historical
movement, nor our culture and cultural progress; the law of duality will be
dissipated in the splendour of the heavenly City, and the final kingdom, fully
delivered, will absorb into itself the new heaven and the new earth, and all
that is other than hell.

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III. THE REGIME OF SECULAR CHRISTENDOM

1. Consecrational Christendom And Secular Christendom

Under the influence of the kingdom of grace, that is to say, in a Christian
climate, we can envisage the flowering of two general types of political
regime.[486]

Those of the first type—which are not to be dreamed of save in a region
populated exclusively or mainly by Christians, indeed by visible members of the
Church of Christ—seek to form a political unity of Christians alone, or
visible members of the Church alone; granting civic rights to no others.

Those of the second type would try to weld into a political unity all the
inhabitants of a region, granting citizenship to all no matter what their
religion, but directing them to temporal and political ends which Christianity
would regard as legitimate and would not disavow.

In the first case, Christian values permeate the whole political order; the
notion of Christianity, of visible membership of the Church, enters into the
very definition of the citizen. That is the Christian consecrational conception
of the temporal regime. In the second case, Christian values affect the
political order from without, to sustain, enlighten and sublimate it; the notion
of Christianity, of visible membership of the Church, remains outside the
definition of the citizen; it designates only a perfect way of being a citizen,
distinguishing a spiritual family of citizens. That is the Christian secular
conception of the temporal regime.

We may use the word "Christendom" in a limited and recent sense,
[487] not directly of the Church nor yet of her successive stages of development
and internal organization, but directly of a certain temporal regime of peoples
who welcome her, a certain cultural complex which she maintains and inspires, a
Christian civilization, a Christian world.[488] In this sense there are two
possible realizations—not univocal, but proportional and analogical—of the
idea of Christendom, two specifically distinct types of Christendom: the
consecrational and the secular.

2. Two Ways Of Justifying A Secular Christendom

1. The legitimacy, indeed the necessity, of a secular Christian temporal
organization, of a Christendom of the secular type, stands clear when we
consider the position of a political power which, while fully resolved to build
a Christian political order, finds itself obliged to unite on the plane of civic
life, citizens of a single region but varying religious belief. The principle is
incontestable that, since faith is something interior, no one is to be
constrained to it.[489] The political power we have in mind cannot allow the
consciences of any of its subjects to be forced, and cannot but take cognisance
of the multiplicity of the spiritual families to which they belong; it will
practise "civil tolerance". Its whole function, its whole effort, will
be to unite these people as citizens and on the temporal plane, following
political rules of Christian inspiration, both as regards means and ends.[490]

There will be no question of falling into "dogmatic tolerance",
which regards all forms of belief or unbelief as equally acceptable, or of
seeking some doctrinal minimum common to all the citizens, believing or
unbelieving; the sole problem will be how to go to work practically for the
realization of a common temporal regime. Undoubtedly the Christian political
effort "comprehended in the fullness and perfection of the truths which it
implies, takes in all Christianity; yes, the whole of Christian ethics and
dogmatics: it is only through the mystery of the redeeming Incarnation that a
Christian sees the proper dignity of human personality, and what it costs. The
idea which he has of it stretches out indefinitely, and only attains the
absolute fullness of its significance in Christ. "But by the very fact that
it is "secular and not sacred, this common task does not in the least
demand in its beginnings a profession of faith in the whole of Christianity from
each man. On the contrary, it includes in its characteristic features a
pluralism which makes possible the convivium of Christians and non-Christians in
one temporal city. Hence, if by the very fact that it is a Christian work it
supposes by hypothesis that those who take the initiative will be Christians,
with a full and total comprehension of the end to be attained, yet it calls to
work all men of goodwill, all those whom a grasp more or less partial and
defective—very defective it may be—of the truths which the Gospel makes
known in their plenitude, disposes to give their practical help (which may not
be the least devoted or the least generous) in the achievement of their common
task. It is here that the text has its fullest force and application: he that is
not against you is for you" (Mark ix. 39).[491] It would be to misapply it
to behave "usually without admitting it to oneself, as if the political
city could not be usefully served except by Catholics."[492]

How, from a Catholic standpoint, can a fraternal accord and partnership on
the spiritual plane, between believers of different denominations, be brought
about? How could such a partnership be made to result normally in co-operation
on the plane of temporal and secular life? These delicate questions were treated
by Maritain in a conference at the fourth World Congress of Faiths.[493] On the
religious and spiritual plane, the basis of this partnership "is not in the
order of intellect and ideas, but of that of the heart and of love: it lies in
friendship, natural friendship, but first and before all in mutual dilection in
God and for God. . . Love is not given to essences, or to qualities, nor yet to
ideas, but to persons, and what we are concerned with here is the mystery of
persons and the divine presence within them. The partnership in question is not
a partnership of beliefs, but a partnership of men who believe. . . In the
fraternal dialogue envisaged there is a sort of forgiveness, of remission, not
bearing on ideas—they deserve none if they are false—but on the state of
those who go along with us. Every believer knows that all men will be judged,
himself along with the others; and that neither he nor the other is God, and
able to judge the other. And what either is in the eyes of God neither knows.
Here the Gospel's Nolite judicare applies in all its force. "Of this
friendship of charity" it will be false to say that it is supra-dogmatic
and that it lives in spite of the dogmas of the faith; such a way of speaking is
inadmissible for all to whom God's word is as absolute as His unity and His
transcendence. "But it is supra-subjective in this sense, that it brings
recognition that the other man exists not as mere accident of the empirical
world, but exists in the sight of God and has a right to exist. Love and
charity, while still holding to the faith, help us to recognize all the truth
and dignity, all the divine and human values, in beliefs that are other than our
own; it makes us respect them, it urges us unceasingly to seek in them all that
bears the stamp of man's original greatness and God's loving-kindness and
generosity." That amounts to saying that "it inevitably involves a
kind of tearing apart of a heart fixed on the truth it loves, and fixed also on
the neighbour who ignores or misappreciates this truth." That is all we can
do on the religious plane. From the Catholic standpoint there can be no other
rapprochement than that of charity. We cannot "enter any sort of communion
less intangible, more determinate, more visible, expressed in some common
intellectual symbol or sacred form. But, on the plane of temporal and secular
life, this rapprochement ought to be expressed in common activities, should be
signified in some more or less strict co-operation having concrete and
determinate objects in view—whether there is question of the common good of
the political society to which each of us respectively belongs, or of the common
good of the whole of our temporal civilization. A common activity supposes
common principles. What community of doctrine in men whose religious convictions
are different, will be capable of holding them together in positive co-operation
for the good of civilization?"

For answer let us recall (1) that men are fundamentally united as having a
common nature; (2) that the immediate end to be practically achieved is in the
natural order. That granted, we can go on to say that "the unity of the
earthly task and the temporal end pursued necessarily suppose a certain
community of principles and of doctrine, but not necessarily—however
desirable, however evidently better and more effective it may be in itself—a
strict and pure and simple doctrinal identity: it suffices that the principles
and doctrines should have a unity of likeness or proportion, let us say in the
technical sense of the word, of analogy, regard being had to the practical end
in question, which, although referable to a higher end, is of itself in the
natural order, and is doubtless conceived by each party in the light of the
principles proper to each, but in its existential reality is extraposed to these
conceptions. "We know of course when we speak in this way that a complete
doctrine, founded on Catholic teaching, can alone bring an entirely true
solution of the problems of civilization." Thus the law of fraternal love,
"which either party understands with different theological and metaphysical
connotations, and which for Christians striving to fulfil a radical—but
terribly contradicted—tendency of our nature is the second commandment like
unto the first", implies at least the practical and implicit recognition of
high spiritual values, such as the existence of God, the sanctity of truth, the
value and necessity of goodwill, the dignity of the person, the spirituality and
immortality of the soul, no matter what theoretical doctrines may be explicitly
professed on these points. In this way, men with different religious convictions
can collaborate not only, as is evident, "in establishing a technique, in
putting out a fire, in helping the hungry and sick, in stopping an aggression.
But it is possible—if the analogical likeness between their principles of
action just mentioned really exists—that they should co-operate at least and
above all in procuring the primary goods of earthly existence, in activities
that bear on the good of the temporal city and civilization and the moral values
invested in them. ""They will work together for the good of the human
city not under cover of any mere equivocation, but in the community of the
analogy between principles, movements and practical proceedings implied by the
common recognition of the law of love, and corresponding to the primary
inclinations of human nature. And why should I conceal the fact that for me, a
Christian, according to whose faith one only Name has been given to men whereby
they can be saved, that even in the temporal order this community of analogy
supposes a first analogue which is purely and simply true? and that implicitly
it is to Christ, known to some, unknown to others, that there tends in the end,
under more or less pure, more or less perfect forms, all authentic love that
works in this world for the reconciliation of men and for the common good of
their earthly life?"

It goes without saying that under a secular as under a consecrational regime
the earthly city, as such, has its duties to God, that it ought to show itself
deeply religious and Christian, that it should effectively collaborate with the
Church.[494] But to fulfil these duties it will neither have to constrain men to
some sort of confessional conformity, nor to set up any interconfessional cult.
Its Christianity will be shown in the elevation of its temporal ends, the purity
of its chosen political means, its public acknowledgement of those Christian
values on which all the sanctity of the temporal order depends, and the
unfailing respect in which it holds the rights of the Church. It is even
conceivable, in a secular regime, that the canonical power might have recourse
to the secular arm; not, of course, under its medieval form and as touching all
the citizens, but those only who belong to the Church.[495]

2. There is a second and more general justification, based on the nature of
things, for the existence of a Christian temporal order of the secular type. If
the spiritual and temporal spheres are essentially distinct, and if the second
is, in itself, subordinate to the first, it is easy to foresee that in the
organization of their relations two great successive periods, two historical
epochs, will be distinguishable.

The first of these will begin at the moment when the supremacy of the
spiritual order is publicly recognized. Then, on account of the extraordinary
power of attraction inherent in spiritual values, they will inevitably begin to
envelop, enwrap, and embrace all values of the temporal order, so that these
latter will seem in a way to be based on them, or, more exactly, withdrawn
behind them, hidden in them, renouncing all ambition for the time being to
assert their difference and emphasise their originality.

The second legitimate period—(leaving on one side the question, whether in
practice it can follow the first without dislocations and dangers)—will begin
at the moment when temporal values, though still fully recognized as essentially
and intrinsically subordinate to spiritual, begin to be seen with a clearer
consciousness of their own specific nature and role; as such they will be
distinguished from spiritual realities, not in the least to be withdrawn from
their influence, but, on the contrary, to achieve a dependence that is to be
more conscious of itself, and more conformable to the respective natures of
either. For the Church too will profit by this differentiation. It will allow
her to appear all the more clearly to the world as the Body of Christ, as the
Kingdom not of this world, but capable nevertheless of illuminating all the
kingdoms of this world with the light of heaven.

To the first epoch corresponds the organization of a Christendom of the
consecrational type. To the second corresponds the organization of a Christendom
of the secular type. And if the differentiation of which I have spoken
represents a normal historical process, a genuine progress, it will be
recognized by the understanding and wisdom of the Church as a good and desirable
solution of the question of her relations with temporal powers. "Even
supposing that religious divisions should one day come to an end, this more
perfect differentiation of the temporal order would remain as a gain
achieved—the distinction between dogmatic tolerance, which regards liberty to
err as itself a good, and civil tolerance, which insists that the commonwealth
should respect the rights of conscience, will remain stamped in the substance of
the city."[496]

3. The Historical Order Of Succession Of The Two Christendoms

After the Edict of Constantine the Graeco-Roman world was moving towards a
Christendom of the consecrational type. To the reason for this just given we may
now add other explanations of the historical order.

Ancient society, as Fustel de Coulanges has convincingly shown, rested on a
confusion of the divine and the social, of the religious and the political.[497]
Christianity—and in this is its miracle—was powerfully to revive the
religious spirit, but by making a profound distinction between the religious and
the political, the things of God and those of Caesar. However, this new and
unexpected distinction could not at once manifest all its consequences to the
Christians who took over from the ancient world; and since it was consistent
with two forms of political organization, it was natural that the majority
should first have looked to the consecrational form, more nearly allied to the
old regime, and have given it the preference.

Did they have any choice in the matter? The Emperors themselves, in the
attempt to reconstruct the Empire on the basis of the living forces of
Christianity, were the first to consider the Christians as the sole true
citizens of the Empire, and so to prepare the advent of a Christendom of the
consecrational type. That at least seems to be suggested by Fr. Konstantin
Hohenlohe: "The great social reform that was to culminate in the abolition
of slavery and the remodeling of the Roman family was only made possible by
discouraging the non-Catholics, for Catholics alone were prepared for these
profound reforms, they alone had learned to respect the slaves and to lead a
healthy family life. . . It was more especially for political reasons that
Constantine and his successors insisted with such a heavy hand on maintaining
unity of faith in the Roman Empire. It emerges, both from one of Constantine's
letters, and from his speech to the Council of Nicaea, that he turned to the
Christians because, above all else, he found a social sense amongst them and a
spirit of sacrifice hitherto unexampled. In the face of endemic military
revolutions, the Church seemed to him to be the sole institution in which any
belief in authority and any moral stability remained. Christianity appeared to
him and his successors to be the only bond of unity that could prevent the
dissolution of the Empire. If they served the unity of the Church, it was
because this unity alone could serve their political designs. And that is why
every attempt against this unity seemed, at the same time, to be an attempt
against the State."[498]

The secular form of Christendom which in the abstract might have been the
earliest in date, or even the only one to be realized in the concrete, in point
of fact came after the consecrational form. The passage from one form to the
other could hardly have been effected without a crisis. The end of a
Christendom, if it is neither the end of the Church nor the end of the world,
will certainly appear as the end of a world, and the birth of another. The
crisis was in fact terrible. Instead of evolving normally towards a secular
Christendom, medieval Christendom was ravaged by the wars of religion, by the
disastrous error of theological liberalism, by the establishment of a regime of
separation between the Church and the State, and lastly by the ideologies of
Communism and Racism. It seems that a secular Christendom, however extensive and
precious its inheritance from the past, is destined to grow in the midst of
ruins. The evil is immeasurable. But thanks to the divine omnipotence it may
well, and all unwittingly, lend itself to the ultimate development of the
Church. Thus the errors of theological liberalism and of the separation of
Church and State, spread now over all the earth, seem today to be preparing the
great pre-Christian civilizations of the East, and even certain peoples of the
Near East, to reject the confusion of the religious and political orders and to
recognize the doctrine of the distinction of the spiritual and temporal
spheres.[499]

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IV. THE REGIME OF CONSECRATIONAL CHRISTENDOM

To the pagan religion, which in the ancient world was immersed in the social
order and identified with the State, there succeeded the Christian. In the
measure of its triumph it brought into being an order in which spiritual things,
not separated but definitively distinguished from the temporal, were to permeate
them with the influence of the Gospel and organize them into a Christendom. The
first of these historical Christendoms was of a type not yet concerned to draw
out all the consequences of the differentiation of spiritual and temporal: first
because such a task was premature, and next because, in view of the prompt
religious unification of the peoples of the West and the diminution of
conflicting beliefs within the confines of a single culture, it did not seem to
be pressing. In this first type, which I have called consecrational, what
notions would be formed of Christendom and of Christian civilization? How shall
we characterize the medieval city, considered (1) in itself and in its intrinsic
nature, and (2) with respect to the authority that ruled it? More precisely, how
shall we (3) define the coercive power in general, and how explain the Church's
responsibility for the infliction of the death penalty in the days of the
Inquisition, and for (4) the wars in the days of the Crusades?

In this study of medieval Christendom it is not my purpose to write its
history. Writing primarily as a theologian, I wish to establish two things—(1)
the legitimacy and logical structure of this type of Christendom; and (2) its
contingent and transitory character: for medieval Christendom with all its
inevitable imperfections was not the only possible form of Christendom. It will
then be my task to determine the powers that devolved upon the Church precisely
on account of this historic type of Christendom; and finally to bring out the
transcendence of the canonical power, its inalienable spirituality, and its
distinction from the inferior powers that have sometimes accompanied it: which
last is the chief purpose of the study as a whole.

1. The Nature Of Medieval Society

We do not need to grasp the nature of medieval society, but only the nature
of the Church, to understand what heresy is in itself and at all times. But
without grasping the nature of medieval society we should never understand the
very special character which heresy took on at this epoch; nor why its social
consequences differed profoundly from those of other forms of infidelity, those
of the heathen, of the Jew, or the Moslem; nor the nature and forms of its
repression in the Middle Ages.

A. Christian Values Integrated In The Structure Of Society

It would be incorrect to describe medieval times as those of a confusion
between the spiritual and the temporal. Since Our Lord's decisive utterance
about God's things and Caesar's, the two powers, even when united in a single
subject, have remained for Christians formally distinct. But their
interrelations were characterized in medieval society by the fact that the
spiritual order did not confine itself to acting on the temporal as a regulator
of political, social and cultural values. It tended besides, in virtue of an
historically explicable process, to associate a part of itself with the
temporal, to weld that part to the temporal, to become thus united with the
temporal, a component element in the structure of society. The idea of
"Christian" tended to enter into the definition of
"citizen", and the idea of Christianity into the definition of
society, not simply as an extrinsic cause and source of inspiration, but as an
intrinsic cause and an integrant part. One had in fact to be Christian, a
visible member of the Church, in order to be a citizen; society, in virtue of
its constitutional principle, was made up of Christians only. Those who did not
visibly belong to the Church were from the first dismissed society: the heathen
over the frontiers, the Jews into ghettos. Those who, having first been
Christians, afterwards broke with the Church, as heretics or schismatics,
constituted a much greater danger—they shook the very bases of the new society
and appeared as enemies of the public safety.

The medieval society was therefore a composite whole, an amalgam of the
spiritual and temporal, in no wise demanded by the nature of things. What is
required by the nature of things is the distinction of the spiritual and the
temporal, and the subordination of the latter to the former, not their fusion as
component parts of society; and another type of Christian society is always
conceivable. But owing to various historical contingencies the medieval fusion
was the best, perhaps even the only practicable, solution. In the measure in
which the peoples of the West were converted to Christianity, they more and more
expressly brought the qualification of "Christian "into the definition
of citizen, the idea of Christianity into the definition of the society. They
had clearly realised that "the divine law that comes of grace does not do
away with human law that comes of natural reason", and that," in
itself, the distinction between faithful and unbelievers does not do away with
the dominion and authority of unbelievers over the faithful".[500] But
since the attempt was made in the concrete to establish a society
constitutionally containing none but Christians, it was not enough to be a man
to enter it; one had besides to be a Christian. According to a distinction
suggested by James of Viterbo, in such a city the natural rights of man as man
stood for the material and initial value; and a man's quality as a Christian, as
a visible member of the Church, became the formal and perfective value.

A second characteristic of the medieval policy, which stems from that just
described, and from the involvement of the spiritual in the temporal I have just
mentioned, is that the dominant dynamic ideal was then that of force at the
service of right, while today the ideal tends to be in the non-totalitarian
states at least—that of the conquest of freedom and the realization of human
dignity.[501]

I have mentioned the very different position which the Middle Ages reserved
for simple unbelievers (pagans, Saracens, Jews) on the one hand, and for
heretics on the other.

B. The Juridical Condition Of The Gentiles Without And Within Christendom

What, in Christian eyes, was the juridical condition of the Gentiles? What
did St. Augustine think about it? What were the views of St. Thomas and his
followers? What was the attitude of the Church?

1. St. Augustine's Recognition Of The Legitimacy Of Political Groups Made Up
Of Unbelievers

The main lines of traditional thought in this matter are easy to make out.
The texts that express it, far from refusing pagans all legal status, went so
far even as to allow them (though outside the consecrational order) to exercise
authority over Christians.

That is the burden of the distinction between the things of Caesar and the
things of God, made in the Gospel and explained by the Apostle when he
recommends the Christians of Rome to obey the constituted authorities, pagan
though they were: "Let every soul be subject to higher powers. For there is
no power but from God; and those that are ordained of God. Therefore he that
resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God" (Rom. xiii. 1-2).

St. Augustine in his turn was often to recall that established authority,
even in the hands of pagans, should be regarded as legitimate. He does so for
example in his penetrating exposition of the Apostle's words written to
undeceive Christians who, on account of their initiation into spiritual liberty,
considered themselves free of all obligations towards the temporal city.[502] He
does so again in his commentary on Psalm cxxiv where he describes the situation
of the Christians under the Emperor Julian: "The faithful soldiers served a
faithless Emperor. Was it a question of worshipping idols, of offering them
incense? They preferred God to the Emperor. Was it a question of mustering for
battle, of marching on the enemy? They obeyed at once. They distinguished their
eternal Master from their temporal master, and nevertheless for their eternal
Master's sake they obeyed their temporal."[503] And even in the De Civitate
Dei, after refusing unbelievers any knowledge of the true republic born of true
justice," of which Christ is the Founder and Guardian", he goes on to
define the terrestrial republic, people, and city by the pursuit of peace. The
peace it pursues, not being the peace of Christ, can hardly be final, but it is
not reprehensible either; indeed it is necessary to the City of God during its
journey through mortality, and the City of God will not hesitate to obey the
laws which guarantee it.[504] It is in these same texts that St. Augustine
passes sentence on the pagan world and declares that, not having known true
justice," without which great kingdoms are merely great robberies",
[505] it could not have known any true city. These severe views (which might be
compared with St. John's maledictions against the Beasts of the Apocalypse,
symbols of the powers of iniquity) helped in the Middle Ages to give birth to
what H. X. Arquilliere calls "political Augustinianism": he
characterises this as a "tendency to absorb natural law into supernatural
righteousness, the law of the State into that of the Church "and considers
it, with reason, as "a simplified and impoverished form of the great
Doctor's thought, a remote and unforeseen consequence of certain pages of his
works, a posthumous derivative of his teaching, in which he would certainly not
have recognized his personal thought in its integrity."[506] However, if
the teaching of Augustine was too narrowly interpreted by his successors, the
truth he brought to light is clear. It is not a denial to the pagans of all
legality, peace and true citizenship: it is the assertion that the temporal city
cannot be perfect—that is to say based on true justice and true peace—save
in dependence on Christianity. How deny, he asks, that the peace so much longed
for by the earthly city is a good? And the earthly city itself is a still better
good, by reason of the human race it harbours. But when this peace and good
begin to be taken as the sole or supreme ones, then indeed catastrophe is on the
way.[507] In other words, the common good of temporal life demands of its own
nature to be ordered to the common good of eternal life: and there we have
another aspect of the traditional doctrine.

2. The Doctrine Of St. Thomas And Of His Followers

Following St. Augustine, the high Middle Ages did not refuse to accord a
legal status to pagans.[508]

Later, this doctrine was not lost sight of. The most authoritative
theologians defended it. "The divine law, which is the law of grace,"
wrote St. Thomas, "does not do away with human law which is the law of
natural reason", so that, in itself, the fact that princes are infidels
does not prevent them from continuing to reign legitimately even over those of
their subjects who may be converted to Christianity.[509] St. Thomas explains a
little further on, in virtue of the same principle, that the prince who falls
into infidelity or apostasy does not, simply on that account, lose his power
over his subjects, who remain bound to obey him: "Unbelief, in itself, is
not inconsistent with dominion, since dominion is a device of the law of nations
which is a human law; whereas the distinction between believers and unbelievers
arises from the divine law, which does not annul human law."[510] A
precision, demanded by the passage of time, is introduced here: it is of itself
that the infidelity of princes leaves their power over the faithful intact; but
the Church reserves the right to take away this power by sentence in certain
circumstances—which will be those obtaining in a consecrational regime.

In his commentary on the Secunda Secundae (1511-1517), Cajetan, who is
certainly thinking of the Indians of the New World, very strongly insists on the
legitimacy of their political status, and on the injustice of making war on them
simply because they are pagans: "There may be unbelievers who are not under
the temporal jurisdiction of Christian princes, either in right or in fact. For
example, the pagans who were never subjects of the Roman Empire, and those who
inhabit lands where the Christian name is unknown. The governments of these
peoples, albeit unbelieving, are legitimate, whether they be of the royal or
democratic form. Their unbelief does not do away with their jurisdiction over
their subjects, since the dominium arises from positive law, and infidelity is
of the divine law which does not annul human law, as St. Thomas explains (II-II,
q. 10, a. 10). No king, no emperor, not even the Roman Church, [511] has any
right to make war on the pagans to take possession of their lands or to subject
them temporally. No pretext for a just war is here discoverable, since Jesus
Christ, the King of kings, to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth,
did not send soldiers or armies to conquer the world, but holy preachers, like
sheep among wolves. And so, even under the Old Law, though that was the time of
armed conquest, I do not see that any war was declared against any people simply
because they were infidels. It was declared against peoples who refused passage,
or who had first attacked the people of Israel, or who detained what did not
belong to them. We should therefore sin grievously if we undertook to spread the
faith of Christ by such means. Not only should we not be legitimate masters of
the peoples thus conquered, but we should be guilty of great robberies, and we
should be bound to make restitution like all those who have unjustly occupied or
conquered a country. We must send these peoples, not conquerors who oppress
them, scandalise them, enslave them and make them twice the child of hell more
than themselves (Matt. xxiii. 15), but holy preachers capable of converting them
to God by their word and by their example."[512]

Taking his stand on the authority of St. Thomas and of Cajetan, Francis of
Vittoria was to affirm in 1532, in his lectures at Salamanca, that infidelity,
in itself, does away neither with public nor private dominion; that Saracens,
Jews and other infidels are therefore true proprietors, just as much as
Christians, and that to despoil them is simply to be guilty of theft and rapine;
[513] that the Barbarians, that is the Indians of the New World, in spite of
their infidelity and the many mortal sins they indulge in, are legitimate
princes and legitimate proprietors, so that Christians can find no justification
in this infidelity and sin for taking possession of their country and stealing
their goods.[514] And this was also to be the doctrine of the man who deserved
to be called the Father of the Indians, the Dominican, Las Casas. In a treatise
published at Seville in January 1553, he protested with the greatest energy, and
a typically Spanish violence, against the theoreticians in the pay of the
Conquistadores, who pretended that since the Indians were unbelievers their
goods and lands passed at once to the Christians: "Those who say that
Christ, by coming into the world, has, ipso jure, deprived the infidels of all
authority, independence, sovereignty and jurisdiction, are uttering absurdities,
contrary to all reason, unworthy of the intelligence of a peasant, scandalous,
infamous, unworthy of the name of Christian. They bear false witness against
Jesus and dishonour Him. There is no greater obstacle to the preaching of the
Gospel. If Christ came to fulfil all justice He could by no means rob men of
their natural rights. With this impious and detestable opinion, they make the
Church a liar, they are guilty of heresy and sacrilege, and those who maintain
it ought to be burnt alive, since it is contrary to Scripture and the doctrine
of the Church."[515]

It is therefore clear, according to the doctrine which may be called
traditional, that unbelievers, if they were outside Christendom, were not on
that account outside the law; and that their juridical status had to be
respected by Christians.[516]

3. The Absolute Inviolability Of The Natural Rights And Conscience Of
Unbelievers

1. We need then say no more of pagan princes governing their pagan subjects.
But a little further on we shall have to return to the case of the pagan prince
whose subjects have become Christian, and still more especially to the case of
the Christian prince who turns unbeliever. For, according to St. Thomas,
although in such circumstances the prince does not, ipso facto, lose his power,
the Church can nevertheless take it away from him by sentence.

It remains to say here that whatever may have been the civil condition of
infidels living in Christendom—of pagans, Saracens, Jews and so on—it was
never permissible to invade their natural rights.[517] And so St. Thomas, who
here appeals to the custom of the Church, forbids the baptism of young children
of Jews and other unbelievers without the consent of their parents.[518] This
teaching of St. Thomas—rejected by Scotus, who maintains that a prince would
act well in ordering the baptism of all his subjects' children, whether Jews or
infidels [519]—continued to prevail in the Church. It was sanctioned notably
by a Bull of Julius III, dated 8th June 1551, [520] and by Benedict XIV's letter
Postremo Mensae of 28th February 1747.[521]

For the same reason, unbelievers, even when they are subjects of Christian
princes, are not to be compelled to enter the Church. The Decretum of Gratian
(Part I, dist. 45, ch. 3) transcribes a letter addressed to Paschasius, Bishop
of Naples, in which Pope St. Gregory forbids the disturbance of Jewish worship:
"If with a right intention you would lead non-Christians to the true faith,
you must use persuasion and not violence. For minds that might easily be
enlightened by your explanations will be estranged by your hostility. All who,
under colour of snatching men from false cults, go about it differently, show
that they seek their own will rather than God's."[522] In Chapter 5 the
Decretum reports the 57th Canon of the fourth national Council of Toledo in 633,
concerning the Jews. As for those who had already been compelled to become
Christian in the reign of Sisebut, and had received the sacraments, they should
remain Christian, and the question of the validity of these extorted conversions
should not be reopened. But "for the future, no one is to be constrained to
believe. For the Lord hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth
(Rom. ix. 18). The Jews are not to be saved in spite of themselves, but freely,
so that all justice be safeguarded. Conversions are to be made by consent, not
constraint, by persuasion, not force."[523] Towards 1190, Clement III
forbade "anyone to compel the Jews to receive Baptism against their
will", and towards 1250 Innocent IV reminded the Archbishop of Arles of the
same principles: "It is contrary to the Christian religion that any man,
without willing it, and in spite of his absolute opposition, should be forced to
become and remain a Christian."[524] Shortly afterwards, St. Thomas was
writing in the Summa that "as for unbelievers who have never received the
faith, such as the heathens and the Jews, they are by no means to be compelled
to the faith in order that they may believe, because to believe depends on the
will". When Christians wage war on unbelievers, "it is not for the
purpose of forcing them to believe, because even if they were to conquer them
and take them prisoners, they should still leave them free to believe if they
will; but in order to prevent them from hindering the faith of
Christ".[525] Finally, the Council of Trent declared that "the Church
never passes judgment on anyone who has not yet come into her by the door of
baptism."[526]

2. To sum up: the medieval Church, as such, regarded the natural rights of
pagans as inviolable. She did not wish their children to be baptized against
their will, nor that they themselves should be compelled to believe.

That applies in the first place to the unbelievers outside the Church who had
a proper juridical status recognized by Christians. It cannot be denied that in
the course of centuries writers appeared who hoped for the destruction of
paganism by fire and sword, and made it a duty for princes to wage war on the
pagans and compel them to believe; [527] but it is impossible to maintain that
they express the authentic thought of the Church.

It applies also, naturally, to unbelieving ethnic groups, Slavs or Moors,
allied with Christian princes, and, on that account, more or less incorporated
into Christendom.

But it also applies even to unbelievers deprived of juridical status and
reduced to bondage, for example, by a just war. If we grant that even these are
not to be constrained to Baptism we shall be led to a solution of the pluralist
type—the permission of more than one religion—especially if their numbers
are considerable. There will be toleration for their rites and their manner of
serving God. That, says St. Thomas, is the practice of the Church.[528]
Undoubtedly there were theologians who, in such circumstances, would concede the
right of Christian princes to impose the faith on unbelievers. But they did not
express the true thought of the Church; and the later theological development,
to which Benedict XIV is a witness, followed a different direction. They were
careful for the most part to speak with reserve. Francis of Vittoria himself
found it difficult to approve the measure by which, in 1502, the Moors of Spain
were forced to choose between conversion and exile. Any political chief who
forced a religion on his subjects would be stigmatized as a tyrant today by all
theologians. And how could Christianity be forced on anyone without opening the
door to sacrilege, and, notably, the worst of all, to sacrilege against the
Eucharist?[529] It is indeed astonishing that this last consideration which,
unfortunately, has nothing chimerical about it, [530] did not prevail in the
minds of theologians of the calibre of Scotus and Vittoria.

C. The Juridical Condition Of The Jews In Medieval Christendom

Religious liberty, which had been taken from the Jews after 135 and restored
to them by the Antonines, was in principle respected and guaranteed by the
Christian Emperors. But it is clear that from the moment when the Empire was
reconstructed on the basis of unity of faith, it could no longer welcome on an
equal footing those Jews who, from the beginning, had shown themselves to be
fierce adversaries of the Christians, and who intended to preserve their
autonomy as a religious and ethnic group. Constantine saw them as people who had
to be kept at arm's length. His successors, whose laws were incorporated in the
Theodosian Code in the fifth century and in Justinian's in the seventh, while
recognizing the Jewish religion as lawful, sought to favour the Christians and
to keep them free from contamination by forbidding the Jews to build new
synagogues, to marry Christian women, to convert Christians, to have Christian
servants in their houses, and so on. It should be remarked that these laws were
not in force for very long throughout the whole Empire, which was now beginning
to crumble.[531]

The barbarian princes adapted the Roman legislation to their kingdoms with
more or less strictness. At intervals, the severity of the laws was equalled or
surpassed; thus Dagobert I in France (630) and Sisebut in Spain (612-613)
ordered the Jews to receive Baptism under pain of exile. To the extent to which
the principle of nationality asserted itself the Jewish dislike of fusion with
the indigenous element drew stronger resentments on their heads. Their position
in Spain during the century preceding the Arab invasion was very
precarious.[532] Then were held those Councils of Toledo so remarkable for their
dogmatic definitions on the Trinity and the Incarnation, but of which it has
been said, in respect of their practical ordinances, that they were "less
Councils than national assemblies of the Spanish monarchy, content to do no
more, or little more, than register the decrees of their sovereigns".
Gratian records several of their canons in the Decretum, and the severe spirit
in which they were couched was to leave its mark on ecclesiastical
legislation.[533] Charlemagne was rather less hard on the Jews. But from the
thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth their situation grew worse.
Although in certain cities they achieved remarkable prosperity, they were
banished successively from England, from France, from a large part of Germany,
and then, in 1492, from Spain, where since 1480 the Inquisition, founded by the
Catholic kings, functioned chiefly against the Marranos; and finally, in 1496,
from Portugal.[534] They emigrated to Italy, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, and
later to Holland and England.

1. The Jews Tolerated, Not In The Church But In Christendom

As long as they were not converted, the Jews, in medieval Christendom, by
reason of their ethnico-religious autonomy, functioned as an alien body embedded
in an organism.

From the standpoint of the Christian faith, their religion appeared as a kind
of infidelity—less grave than heresy, since it was not a repudiation of the
Christian faith.[535] That is the original meaning of the phrase "perfidia
judaica".[536] Now the Church, as such, that is to say Christianity, the
spiritual kingdom, can cheerfully tolerate sinful members within her, or again,
a conflict of theological opinions, or the onerous conditions of a Concordat,
and so on; but it is clear that she cannot tolerate infidelity in her own ranks,
that her task is to fight it with all the spiritual weapons the Saviour has
placed in her hands.

The Church, however, can readily agree that Christian princes, Christendom,
the temporal kingdoms, should put a certain pluralism into practice in respect
of other religious groups, and tolerate, for example, the exercise of infidel
cults. Religious tolerance is then realized and takes effect on the plane of
temporal life. Political rulers, the princes of the Christian states, or of the
states of the Church, will accordingly admit the Jews to their territory under
certain conditions, and will guarantee them the free exercise of their worship;
they may act likewise with regard to other non-Christian peoples, Moslem
populations for example, whom they may have subjugated in a just war.

2. The Special Reason For This Tolerance: The Mystery Of Israel

In the case of the Jews, says St. Thomas, there is, it is true, a special
reason for toleration.[537] For their worship prefigured the Christian faith;
they bear witness, in spite of themselves, to its truth; their remnants are to
be saved at the end of time. What lies at the bottom of the Jewish question is
the mystery of Israel. The Saviour pointed to this mystery when He predicted
"the hardening of the hearts of the Jews (Matt. xii, 41; xiii. 12; xxiii.
36), the conversion of the Gentiles in default of the Jews (Matt. xxii. 8; xxiv.
14), and the final conversion of the Jews (Matt. xxiii. 39)."[538] And for
the Christians of the Gentile world St. Paul unveils the profound significance
of these prophecies (Rom. ix-xi). He reminds them first that the Old Testament
prophecies have not been falsified, since they are realized in the spiritual
Israel, the Church: "Not as though the word of God hath miscarried, for all
are not Israelites that are of Israel" (ix. 6). Then he considers the lot
of carnal Israel, the Jewish people. Their rejection is full of mystery and
their prerogatives remain astonishing: the offence of the Jews becomes the
riches of the world: it hastens the conversion of the Gentiles, and that will
one day provoke a salutary jealousy in the Jews. "I say then: have they so
stumbled that they should fall? God forbid. But by their offence salvation is
come to the Gentiles, [539] that they may be emulous of them. Now if the offence
of them be the riches of the world, and the diminution of them the riches of the
Gentiles: how much more the fullness of them?" (Rom. xi. 12). They are and
always will be, in a way, a people consecrated to God, dedicated to God; and if
the nations are in the Church as a wild olive grafted on a good tree, they too
will one day be in her as on their own olive tree. "If the root be holy, so
are the branches. And if some of the branches be broken, and thou, being a wild
olive, art engrafted in them, and art made partakers of the root and of the
fatness of the olive tree: boast not against the branches. . . If thou wert
grafted into the good olive tree, how much more shall they, that are the natural
branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?" (16-24). If they continue
as a people in spite of their dispersion, it is that they may be one day
re-integrated in the Church. "I would not have you ignorant, brethren, of
this mystery. . . that blindness in part has happened in Israel until the
fullness of the Gentiles should come in. And so all Israel should be saved"
(25-26). Then, as their rejection had provoked the reconciliation of the
Gentiles, their re-integration will provoke a resurrection of the dead (15). It
is therefore clear that they are still the people of God, somewhat as a
rebellious son remains a son, and an apostate priest remains a priest, in virtue
of an election which, for all their refusal of the Gospel, remains irrevocable:
"As concerning the gospel indeed they are enemies for your sake; but as
touching the election they are most dear for the sake of the fathers. For the
gifts and the calling of God are without repentance" (28-29). The nature of
the mystery that weighs upon Israel according to the flesh can be glimpsed: it
is the mystery of a people chosen for the purpose of inaugurating the Church and
refusing the grace of the Church, but whose lot remains bound up with that of
the Church. It marks in reverse the theme traced through history by the Church
in relief. This people, primarily no doubt in its books, but also in its flesh,
is the bearer of prophecies.[540] There was therefore a special reason to
tolerate it in medieval Christendom, but this tolerance had to be prudently
hedged about. The Jews could exercise their religion, but proselytism was
forbidden them, the publicity of their worship was reduced, [541] and the number
of their synagogues limited.[542] And when, between 1238 and 1240, the
blasphemies of the Talmud against Christ were discovered, the book was ordered
to be burnt.[543]

3. The Civil Status Of The Jews

These restrictions on their worship did not, as we have pointed out, touch
the natural rights of the Jews. Their children could not be taken from them nor
Baptism forced on them. The dilemma of conversion or exile, although it survived
a long time in the practice of princes or of certain bishops, was condemned even
by one of the national Councils of Toledo.[544] The general teaching of the
Church is clear.[545]

But from the civic point of view, the rights of the Jews, like those of other
unbelievers, were strictly limited. They were forbidden to exercise any public
functions, a prohibition that applied also to Saracens; [546] for how could
those who rejected the mystery of Christ be given the direction of a society
composed of Christians alone?[547] If the feudal regime hardly allowed them to
become great proprietors they could at any rate hold landed property and let it
to agricultural workers, who, however, could neither eat nor lodge with them;
[548] but neither they nor the Saracens could have Christian slaves in their
houses, since their faith would be endangered.[549] A Jew could neither buy nor
keep in service any of the baptized, nor any unbeliever asking for Baptism; if
he had bought for re-sale any infidel seeking Baptism, he had to turn him over
to Christians, subject to due compensation.[550] The Jews were obliged, like the
Saracens, to wear clothes that differed from those of the Christians, so as to
hinder marriages and other close relations with Christians.[551] They grouped
themselves, quite spontaneously to start with, in the same quarter of the town
around their synagogue; but later on, in the fifteenth century, and especially
in Spain and the Pontifical States, they were forcibly confined to these
ghettos.[552]

4. How Justified

At the moment when it opted against its Messiah, [553] the messianic people
mysteriously and irremediably left the ways marked out for it by Providence.
Till the day of its reintegration in the Church dawns, Israel will be a
disorientated and frustrated people, and the Jewish problem will find no
solution.

Was the mystery of Israel to be stamped on the secular history of this
people, and thus to influence also the temporal destinies of the Jews? The
ancients thought so.[554] We may take them to task perhaps for looking at it a
little too narrowly, for taking very accidental or even very dubious forms of
"fulfilment" as the logical upshot of the prophecies. Thus the
impossibility of incorporating the Jews in a constitutionally Christian society
and the restrictions with which they had to be surrounded in a consecrational
regime, seemed to be so many direct consequences of their primary deviation. And
further, the state of servitude into which the Jews fell for various reasons
after the Crusades [555] was thought to be justified, in so far as it had become
a part of the public law, by their initial transgression. Thence it comes that
texts of Innocent III and of St. Thomas on the servitude of the Jews [556] may
bring together considerations of very unequal value, but following in strict
sequence: the carnal Israel has preferred the religion of servitude to the
religion of liberty (cf. Gal. iv. 21-30); [557] it has departed from the ways of
providence till the day of its re-integration (Rom. xi); it cannot mingle with a
consecrational Christendom; the public law at the end of the Middle Ages
considers it as in bondage. The origins of this bondage are sometimes sought far
back.[558] In reality it had no other foundation than the actual laws of the
period.

5. An Appreciation Of The Medieval Solution

The theologian is under no obligation to justify all the laws brought to bear
on the Jews by provincial Councils or by the Popes, the latter, notably, as
princes of the Pontifical States.[559] He is even less bound to take up the
defence of all that was done in Christendom against the Jews. Medieval
Christendom was an attempt at political organization under the sign of the
Christian faith; it was very far from making perfect application of the
principles of the Gospel on the plane of social and political life. We must
realize however that the Papacy always aimed at keeping the Jewish problem clear
of the political or religious passions that obscured it, and at bringing it back
to its essentials. The measures the Popes adopted to regulate the activities of
the Jews and to limit their influence, were dictated by the need to maintain the
basic principle of the political constitution of the West. They belonged to the
logic of a consecrational conception of the temporal order which, by definition,
granted the quality of citizenship to Christians alone.[560] Doubtless they did
not amount to the solution of the Jewish problem. They were but a solution, a
political and provisional compromise. "The Middle Ages tried out a
consecrational solution, in conformity with the typical structure of the
contemporary civilisation. This solution, the solution of the ghetto, based on
the fact of a divine chastisement hanging over Israel, and giving the Jews the
status of foreigners in the Christian society, was of its nature hard, and in
application often iniquitous and ferocious; it proceeded however from a lofty
idea. . .; of the religious order, and nowise racial, it recognized the
privilege of the soul, and the Jew, when baptized, entered as of right into the
full convivium of the Christian society. This medieval solution has passed away
to return no more, like the type of civilization from which it
Sprang."[561]

Where this medieval solution is concerned, we must make a careful distinction
between (1) a modus vivendi political by nature, which was, obviously,
imperfect, but which, permitting as it did the peaceful living side by side of
Jews and Christians, by the same token was a good, and which the Church could in
consequence approve as valid in the temporal order; (2) the vexations and
iniquities which the Jews suffered at the hands of the Christians, whether
rulers or subjects, clerics or laymen, in the practical application of this
modus vivendi, and which, in consequence, the Church as such has never accepted
as her own responsibility.

The political emancipation of the Jews began in Holland in the seventeenth
century, and then spread to England. "The young United States of America
recognized the political equality of Jewish citizens. . . In 1791 the French
Revolution granted the status of active citizens to the Jews, but on condition
that they renounced all national particularism. The other states, except Russia,
followed this example sooner or later. The Jew need not any longer be an object
of contempt. The importance of the Jews in the world became considerable. But
the Jewish problem remains. HOW could religious liberalism provide the solution?
It ignored on the one hand the mystery of the Church on which hangs the notion
of a truly human temporal order; and, on the other, it ignored the mystery of
Israel, of the election that still rules the destinies of this people and will
do so till the day of its conversion. Some notice will have to be taken of this
two-fold datum if it is desired to fix the place of the Jews in the Christendom
of the future."[562]

D. The Position Of Heretics

The condition of heretics in the old consecrational Christendom was quite
other than that of the Jews and of simple unbelievers.

Instead of flourishing outside the Church like Judaism and paganism, heresy
is an evil that infects her own subjects, those who belong to her fully and
visibly; gaining on her like a cancer on its parent organism. The Church has
then to fight in her own members against the seductions that carry them away.
She can avail herself of canonical penalties to remind them of their former
solemn promises and to save the rest of the faithful from apostasy. The common
doctrine of the Church has always looked with very different eyes, first, from
the speculative standpoint, on the infidelity of Jews and pagans as compared
with that of heretics; and again, from the canonical standpoint, on those who
have never been her members, as compared with those who at first were so and
have fallen away.

These considerations are valid for all ages. But in the Middle Ages the
position of heretics had a special significance. In a society which never
pretended to contain any but Christians, any but visible members of the Church,
heresy loomed up unexpectedly as something anarchic, something capable of
destroying the whole political and social structure from within. It amounted to
a crime against the public safety. And a crime it would have to remain until it
became strong enough itself to form independent political organizations of its
own and to defend them by arms—when we have the period of the "wars of
religion"; finally new heretical States arose, also modelled on the
consecrational ideal, and, like the medieval State, proscribing any new
"heresies", that might arise within them.

Thus, as long as temporal society was ruled by this consecrational ideal,
which, at the fall of the Roman Empire, saved the Western world—but which
eventually ceased to be useful—heresy amounted to a political disorder with
which it was impossible in principle to make terms, [563] whether it was
professed inwardly in good faith or bad. Let us rather say that as long as the
consecrational temporal order was legitimate, the political harmfulness of all
heresy was evident to everybody, and that in this sense good faith could not be
presumed.

When the consecrational temporal order broke down, it was the spirit of
indifference, of unbelief, of hatred of Christianity, religious liberalism grown
powerful on account of the scandalous divisions of the Reformation, which was to
take up the tale and put its stamp on Western civilisation. And that is why the
Church tried to save the old order of things for as long as possible. We may
venture to think that she would have defended it less energetically—that she
would have abandoned it spontaneously, even boldly—if she had found a more
enlightened faith and a higher sanctity in more of her children, and if, in
consequence, she had felt it possible to pass to a secular Christian order
without any tragic break.

E. Characters Of Consecrational Christendom

1. Compenetration Of Church And State

From a first regime in which she had remained external to the State, which
had showed itself hostile and persecuting but later became more friendly, the
Church passed gradually to a regime in which a portion of her being became
entangled in the stuff of the State and there took on a growing importance.

Undoubtedly in herself the Church remains outside and transcends all states,
whether we consider her primary essential function which is to form the Kingdom
of God, or her secondary essential function which is to sanctify the social,
political and cultural work of mankind. But historically, by reason of the
Christian values included in the very definition of the medieval State, the
Church came in a way to be mirrored in the State; which nevertheless remained
essentially distinct from her and inadequate to her. Thus the State received a
consecrational character.

The Church exerted a profound influence on the affairs of the State. She was
involved, in a way, with the administration of the temporal, by the fact that
the very texture of the "consecrational "temporal order comprised
supernatural values, such, for instance, as the profession of the Catholic
faith, which none but she could define or control. Not that she needed to
encroach on the jurisdiction of the princes. But she was then doubly authorized
to remind them of their duty to defend the common good of the State: first under
her general and permanent title as guardian and illuminator of temporal values;
and then under a special and temporary title, due to the supernatural element
incorporated and incarnated in the structure of the consecrational State. It was
never, to be sure, the business of the Church herself to defend the faith
considered as representing political values, or herself to take up arms on
behalf of the State and the spiritual interests embodied in it. But under a
consecrational regime she could impose this duty on princes with very special
insistence. There we have one of the reasons for the intimate compenetration of
the spiritual and the temporal in medieval times.

2. "Church" And "Christendom"
Partially Synonymous

We can, and commonly do, distinguish the Church, the spiritual andindefectible
Kingdom, from Christendom, that is to say thetemporal and perishable
kingdoms, the societies which, beingconsecrational, themselves insisted
on unity of faith, but as anelement of their political unity.

However, since a consecrational Christendom comprised a spiritualelement
as one of its components, and was so penetrated by theChurch that the
latter descended in a way into the very heart ofthe State, there was a
natural tendency to extend the name of theChurch to cover Christendom
itself. Taken in this large andimproper sense the Church englobed
Christendom.

It was on this account that, having quoted Gregory IX, who in 1229 saw in the
University of Paris "the river that waters andfertilizes the whole
paradise of the Church", and Jourdain, whoconsidered it (along with
the priesthood and the Empire) as thethird of the institutions necessary
to the Church, Etienne Gilsonadds that "we observe at this period a
strong tendency toidentify. . . Christendom with the Church, as if the
temporal andhistorical matter had already been wholly absorbed into thespirituality of its end. In reality, the University of Paris neverwas,
and could not be, an institution of the Church, but wasrather a French
institution adopted by the Church to become anessential pivot of
Christendom. We must be quite clear on thispoint, which is not without
its importance even for the presentstate of the problem of
Christendom."[564] We have seen St.Thomas writing that the Jews are
bondsmen of the Church [565] (byreason of their temporal submission to
the prince of thePontifical State, or the other princes of Christendom);
and againthat the Church has tolerated the rites of unbelievers [566]
(itwas in Christendom, not in the Church that the rites weretolerated);
and he says in a Quodlibet that the Church has armiesand that the kings
are her vassals [567] (which can evidently bevalid only for Christendom
and for the Pope as a prince ofChristendom). When Pope Boniface VIII
declared in the Bull UnamSanctam that the Church "has both swords,
that is the spiritualand the temporal, in her power", he affirms
that the temporalpower is in the bosom of the Church only because he too
takes theword Church in the sense of Christendom.[568]

However, in the Middle Ages the word "Christendom" was usuallytaken
in a sense rather different from that of the word "Church". It
always connoted, whether directly or indirectly, proximatelyor remotely,
the Church herself. But it directed attention ratheron her lay elements,
her relations with the world of culture, hertemporal interests, her
social activities and embodiments, theorganized political whole she was
trying to sanctify, and even onthe peoples of the Byzantine Empire which
the Middle Ages nevergave up as finally lost to the unity of the
Church.[569]

3. Consecrational Christendom A Dynamic Ideal Rather Than A Realized Idea

I shall try to define this consecrational Christendom, to grasp itin
its essential type. But this essential type was nevercompletely embodied
in concrete fact along with all its impliedconsequences.

It was on its way to realization in medieval times. It showeditself
first as a formative impulse directing and sustaining themovement of
culture, like a seed fallen into the soil of historyand there gradually
unfolding its virtualities. As the Church cameto fuller consciousness of
her victory over the ancient world, thespiritual element she had
deposited at the heart of theconsecrational society gained ever more and
more control and moreclearly manifested its exigencies: thus, for
example, the measurestaken against heretics became more rigorous and
even extended tothe Western schismatics;[570] thus the excommunication
ofprinces, by a consequence that does not seem to have been directly
envisaged at first, began to involve their deposition.[571]

While the consecrational order was evolving in accordance with itsown
internal logic and was revealing its multiple implicationswith ever
greater precision, it seems that faith too would have tokeep pace with
it and become ever more and more delicate and moreprofound: for although
the consecrational order, being temporal,could tolerate many
defects,[572] it nevertheless tended toestablish a very high ideal of
social life, and one that wasdeeply saturated with the data of
revelation.[573] Unfortunately,instead of presenting the spectacle of an
interior growth of theevangelical life, the end of the Middle Ages
displays, in everybranch of human activity, the advent of a spirit of
independencefinding ever more and more difficulty in accommodating
itself tothe rules of the faith and of the Christian life. The demands
ofthe consecrational regime became more and more imperious, but thedifficulty
of maintaining and applying it increased from day today. The Sovereign
Pontiffs were constrained to a growingseverity. From Gregory VII or from
Innocent III, to Gregory IX, toInnocent IV, to Boniface VIII or to St.
Pius V, their task seemedto become ever more overwhelming. We feel that
the end of a worldis in preparation and that consecrational Christendom,
whose rolehad been so glorious, was beginning to crumble under its ownweight.

2. Authority Over The Temporal In A Consecrational Regime

A. The Power Of The Prince

St. Paul recommended the faithful to obey authorities that werepagan,
but, in the Middle Ages, faith and communion with theChurch became
indispensable for the legitimacy of the princelyauthority.

I. THE PRINCE NECESSARILY A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH

St. Thomas relies on the authority of Gregory VII, who releasedthe
subjects of an excommunicated prince from their oaths ofallegiance, to
establish that an apostate prince cannot retain hispower.[574] Why not?
It was not because unbelief of necessitydoes away with dominion: for an
unbelieving prince can rulelegitimately over unbelievers, and, in
certain cases, overbelievers. It was in virtue of particular historical
circumstanceswhich gave the Church the right to intervene in the
organizationof political society on account of the Christians who were
itsmembers. "Unbelief, in itself, is not inconsistent with
dominion,since dominion is a device of the law of nations which is a
humanlaw; whereas the distinction between believers and unbelievers isof divine law, which does not annul human law. Nevertheless a manwho
sins by unbelief may be sentenced to the loss of his right ofdominion,
as also, sometimes, on account of other sins."

A little further back St. Thomas treats of dominion and unbeliefin a
broader way, not in connection with apostasy, but with thesimple
unbelief of a prince who had never belonged to the Church,and who
therefore can never be subject to any canonical penalty.[575] The principles
involved are the same. "Dominion andauthority [dominium et
praelatio] are institutions of human law,while the distinction between
faithful and unbelievers arises fromthe divine law. Now the divine law,
which is the law of grace,does not do away with human law, which is the
law of naturalreason. Wherefore the distinction between faithful andunbelievers,
considered in itself, does not do away with dominionand authority of
unbelievers over the faithful. Nevertheless thisright of dominion or
authority can be justly done away with by thesentence or ordination of
the Church, which has the authority ofGod." And here is the reason:
"since unbelievers in virtue oftheir unbelief deserve to forfeit
their power over the faithfulwho are converted into children of
God."

Thus therefore certain effects of the law of nations, such as theprinciple
of legitimacy, can at times be set aside by sentence ofthe Church. On
the consecrational hypothesis it is in fact clearthat society cannot be
left to an apostate prince nor entrusted toan unbelieving prince. The
legitimate prince is a member of theChurch, intra Ecclesiam.[576]

2. The Two Politically Legitimate Regimes Recognized By The Ancients

The texts of St. Thomas himself thus introduce us to two politicalregimes,
both legitimate.

In the first, the prince is an unbeliever. His power, based onhuman
law depending on natural reason, is entitled to respect bythe Christian
conscience. The Apostle Paul recognises theauthority of a prince, such
as Nero, and he speaks to thePhilippians (see St. Thomas II-II, q. 10,
a. 10, obj. 2) of saintsin Caesar's household (iv. 22).

In the second regime, political unity demands religious unity.Hence
no unbelieving prince can be legitimate. Also there will beno question
of appealing to any unbelieving potentate without—that is to say to any not
incorporated in the Catholic Church—to rule the Christian society.[577] Next,
if we suppose anunbelieving prince whose subjects are beginning to pass
to thetrue faith, this prince could be repudiated as soon as conversionsbecame numerous enough [578] to warrant, without injustice orscandal,
the foundation of a consecrational State. Finally, anapostate prince
will be deposed. As we see, the duty of civicobedience to pagan Emperors
like Nero, or "apostates" like Julian,[579] recognized under the first
Christian regime, ceased to bejustifiable under the second.

The conditions of legitimacy could thus undergo profoundmodifications
when the constitution of political society wasaltered.

3. Political Augustinianism And Consecrational Politics

Why was the primitive principle of legitimacy judged to beinsufficient
in the Middle Ages, and under what immediateideological influence was it
transformed?

This change was certainly due to a large extent to the current ofthought
known as "political Augustinianism".[580] Numerousecclesiastical
writers, taking their cue from texts of St.Augustine on the
impossibility of any true justice, any truepeace, and consequently any
true republic, before the coming ofChrist, concluded—but against
Augustine's own thought—thatthe ancient world, and, more generally,
all unbelieving nations,could enjoy no incontestable political rights,
and that the Churchalone could introduce the principle of political
legitimacy to thepeoples she converted. There can be no question of
denying theimportance of this movement of ideas, which developed, as we
haveindicated, on the margins of the authentic theological tradition.But precisely on that account it fails to provide the fundamentalexplanation
of the medieval political system; and I believe thatthe greater part of
its success came from the fact that it was avery much simplified and
very crude justification of a state ofthings which rested in reality on
much more complex and muchsubtler considerations: a state of things
which I have called theconsecrational political regime.

Thus, the principle of political Augustinianism would explain,doubtless
very clearly, that an apostate prince, by leaving theChurch in which
lies the source of all legitimate political order,would at once lose his
rights of dominion. But the explanationwould be a bad one, because, by
starting from the same premises,we could conclude that the princes of
unbelieving peoples werewithout rights and could be dispossessed simply
in virtue of theirunbelief. That, in fact, is how the opponents of
Cajetan,Vittoria, and Las Casas reasoned at the moment of the conquest
ofthe West Indies.

In the light of the principle of the consecrational State thingstake
on a different aspect. There exists a human law, based onreason, which
is not necessarily done away with when the divinelaw, based on grace,
supervenes. Outside Christendom, this humanlaw is the sole one. It ought
to be held as sacred by Christianprinces, and also by the faithful who
live scattered among thenations, in conditions analogous with those of
the Christians inthe time of Nero or Julian the Apostate. But in
societies whosepolitical unity is based on unity of faith, where
Christians areorganizing themselves politically as Christians, when the
regimeis consecrational, a new element, of which the Church alone isjudge,
enters into the qualification of the citizen, and, afortiori, that of
the legitimate prince. It is evident that a manunder excommunication
cannot. retain the dominion. Human law,founded on reason, is not indeed
renounced; it is partiallyneutralized by the law inscribed in the very
constitution of thesociety and vanishes in the exact measure in which it
opposes thesuperior exigencies of this fundamental law. Is not that,
afterall, the teaching of James of Viterbo? He poses the question: Wasthe temporal power instituted by the spiritual power? Or does itfind
its foundation in nature? "Between these two opposed paths wecan
find a middle and more reasonable one by saying that thetemporal power
results materially and initially [inchoative] fromthe natural
inclination of men, and therefore from God Himselfinasmuch as a work of
nature is a work of God; but that it resultsformally and fully
[perfective] from the spiritual power. . . Thata man receives authority
over men belongs to human law founded onnature. But that one of the
faithful receives authority over thefaithful, comes of divine law, issue
of grace. For it is grace,not nature, that makes the faithful; and since
the divine law isin the hands of the Vicar of Christ, it is to him that
belongs theinstitution of faithful kings and of temporal power over thefaithful as such. Also in the Church [here read Christendom] thetemporal
prince has power over men by human law and over thefaithful by divine
law. And if the faith fulfils [informat]nature, the spiritual power
institutes the temporal by fulfillingit and fulfils it by instituting
it."[581]

4. Institution And Deposition Of The Temporal Power

1. In seeking to justify the formula of Hugh of St. Victor, famousin
the Middle Ages, according to which "the spiritual power has toinstitute
the temporal that it may exist, and must judge it if itbehaves
ill",[582] James of Viterbo distinguishes, in the passagecited, two
complements, two fulfillments, which the politicalauthority can receive
from the spiritual order: first that offaith, without which it would be
neither wholly true nor complete;and then that of the approbation and
ratification of the "sacring", the anointing.

Of the necessity of faith and visible membership of the Churchenough
has been said. Clearly, such will not suffice for aprinciple of
legitimacy: in itself, it is simply a prerequisite.Accidentally,
however, in virtue of circumstances, it could decideaccession to the
throne.

What now is the meaning of the sacring, the consecration, theanointing?
It was left undecided. In itself it was but a simplesacramental designed
to call down the divine benediction on aChristian prince.[583] But in
certain historical crises it couldtake on a larger significance; and,
for example, in the case of acompetition for the throne, it could serve
to designate thatcandidate whose faith and communion with the Church was
beyonddoubt, and who alone, in consequence, could remain legitimateprince.
The consecration then served for a sign of loyalmembership of the
Church.

2. It was within the outlook of a consecrational politicalorganization,
and in the limited way we have described, that theChurch could be said
to institute the temporal authority. We shallhave to retain this outlook
to understand how she came to be ableto depose princes. Her canonical
power itself gave her the rightto excommunicate a prince guilty of
apostasy or of some scandalouscrime. The consequence, in a
consecrational regime, was clear. St.Thomas, relying on the authority of
Gregory VII, formulates itthus: "As soon as sentence of
excommunication is passed on aprince for apostasy from the faith, his
subjects are ipso factoabsolved from his authority and from the oath of
allegiancewhereby they were bound to him." The excommunication
necessarilyentailed deposition, and the canonical intervention thuspenetrated
into the very heart of politics. But this necessaryconsequence was
operative only in a consecrational regime; and, inthis sense, it can be
said to have been accidental. We see in whatcontext we must place the
sentence of 1080, by which Gregory VII,for the second time,
excommunicated and deposed King Henry.[584]

Up to this point we have considered the deposition of princes onlyin
an abstract and theoretical way. In practice, things did notstop there.
We see the Pope placing the vassals of an apostateprince under
obligations of conscience to take up arms againsthim, and to take the
responsibility for violent action onthemselves: that much he could still
do in virtue of his canonicalpower, as we shall soon see. But we further
see the Pope himselftake over the direction of military operations
against rebelliousprinces: that is something he could not do save in
virtue of atemporal and extra-canonical power, as prince, for example,
of thePontifical State or as Protector of Christendom.

3. In a text already quoted St. Thomas wrote that "this right ofdominion
or authority [of unbelievers over the faithful] can bejustly done away
with by the sentence or ordination of the Churchwhich has the authority
of God: since unbelievers [here, those whohave never been subjects of
the Church] in virtue of theirunbelief deserve to forfeit their power
over the faithful who areconverted into children of God."[585] And
Francis of Vittoriaexplains, in his commentary on this article, that
"wherever thereare Christians the Church has rights over them; and
that is why,in punishment for their infidelity, since unbelievers might
turnChristians from their faith, the Church can do away with the powerof unbelievers." It is certain in fact that wherever there areChristians
the Church has divine authority to intervene and todefend the faith: in
her own spiritual way however, and by thespiritual means (material or
moral) that are properly hers. It isfurther certain that the Church will
have the right—but solelyin a consecrational regime—in order to
defend the faith whichhas accidentally become a political value, to have
recourse tothose severe means which societies commonly use to protect
theirown existence and fundamental laws against enemies within andwithout.
From this standpoint St. Thomas is able to affirm withjustice that the
Church always has the right to annul the dominionor lordship of
unbelievers over Christians; and that, when sheabstains from its
exercise, it is merely "to avoid scandal".[586] But neither he nor the
medieval writers envisaged thepossibility of another type of Christian
society that would notdemand unity of faith and visible communion with
the Church as theindispensable basis of political unity. They knew only
of twoforms of political legitimacy: that of the paganism mentioned bySt. Paul; and that of consecrational Christendom which they hopedwould
last till the end of the world, and which is today no more.For my own
part, I believe in the coming of a third form ofpolitical legitimacy,
that of a secular Christendom.

B. The Power Of The Clergy

It was the canonical power that directly pertained to the clergy;but,
as we shall see, an extra-canonical or temporal power could,for various
reasons, be superadded.

1. The Field Of The Canonical Power In The Middle Ages

The canonical power exists for the spiritual kingdom, for theChurch.
Its essential and permanent task is to rule this kingdom,to extend and
defend it by those spiritual means alone (whether ofthe material or the
moral order) bequeathed her by Christ and theApostles; and not by the
heavy-handed political means with whichprinces are accustomed to rule
the kingdoms of this world. "Jesussaid to him: put up again thy
sword into its place, for all whotake the sword shall perish with the
sword" (Matt. xxvi. 52). "Mykingdom is not of this world; if
my kingdom were of this world myservants would certainly strive that I
should not be delivered tothe Jews" (John xviii. 36). That applies
to the Church as such,for all time, and for every country on earth.[587]

But a special phenomenon appeared in the Middle Ages. In virtue ofthe
principle that bases political unity on the unity of visiblecommunion
with the Church, a spiritual element descended into thecivil order and
became one of its components. Since this element,taken in itself, was
spiritual, it remained subject to the Churchwhich had sole authority to
define and control it. However, fromthe fact of its incorporation in the
city it could and should bedefended not only with spiritual ends in
view, for the sake of andby the spiritual means of the Church, but also
with temporal endsin view, for the sake of the civil order and by the
temporal meansat the disposal of states; it could and ought to be
defended notonly as a value of Christianity, but also as a value ofChristendom.
To the degree in which the constitution of themedieval society
recognized the faith as a value intrinsic to itscommon good, it is clear
that the Church could require the faithto be defended with all the
machinery used by cities in defence oftheir common good.

2. The Canonical Power's Two Ways Of Calling On The Secular Arm

Here we enter on the delicate problem of recourse to the seculararm.
We can imagine two ways in which the canonical power mightcall on the
secular power for its use, and two ways in which thesecular power might
subordinate itself to the canonical.

Either the secular power consents for the moment to act for aspiritual
end, for the sake of the Church as such—by expelling,for example, at
the Church's request, public sinners less noxiousto itself than to the
Church, whose moral standards are stricter.In that case it puts itself
at the disposal of the canonical power as a pure instrument, the latter taking
the initiative and thedirect responsibility, and merely requiring the
thing to be donewith due regard to its spiritual nature and with less
than theusual temporal severity. What is done thus by the secular arm isspiritualised by the Church and pertains to her own kingdom.

Or else the canonical power, by reason of the spiritual elementinterwoven
into the very texture of the temporal and constitutingits supreme value,
throws its influence over the temporal as awhole, making it a pressing
duty for the secular power to defendthis supreme value by its own proper
means, and to oppose thosewho seek to overturn it, in its own proper
way.

In the first case, the Church asks the secular power to act as apure
instrument for the Church's ends and in the Church's way. Inthe second
case she asks it to act as an autonomous temporal causefulfilling its
proper temporal task (that she can do at all times)while specifying (and
this she can do only in a consecrationalregime) that the fulfilment of
the temporal task involves thedefence, by temporal means and in a
temporal way, of thosespiritual values that are bound up with the
temporal.

3. The Two Swords

To the question: does the Church hold both swords? we can now,from a
strictly theological standpoint,[588] give a first answer.

It is to be noted to start with that the "spiritual sword ',means
the canonical power, which is not merely coercive but alsolegislative
and judiciary, and that the "material" or "temporal" sword
means the secular power, which also is not merely coercivebut
legislative and judiciary. That the Church holds the spiritualsword is
clear enough. Further, to the extent to which she canhave recourse to
the "temporal sword" it may be said that she hasit, possesses
it. But this possession is to be understood in twovery different ways.

The Church holds the temporal sword above all when she makes itserve
as an instrument for ends that are directly spiritual (fromwhich action
the State also will reap advantage). Thus shetransforms an instrument
which in virtue of its end is temporalinto one that in virtue of its end
is spiritual. She makes it herown. But on condition that she directs its
use, restrains itsviolence, forbidding for example the shedding of blood
and thedeath penalty, and so refusing to hold as licit for herself whatis so only for the State, to confuse the righteousness of theKingdom
of Heaven with that of the kingdoms of this world. Becauseit is the
mission of the Church to embody the Kingdom of Heaven inthe world and to
take all the measures this demands, she can onoccasion, notably in
certain political conditions which were thosethat obtained in medieval
society, use the temporal sword as aninstrument and thus extend her
field of action; but because theChurch is not a kingdom of this world
she cannot use this temporalsword without many restrictions.

Again, the Church has the temporal sword, this time in quiteanother
sense, when she asks or commands the State to use it forends that are
directly temporal; and in the consecrational Stateshe has a special
title to do so on account of the Christianvalues incorporated in
society. She does not then transform thesword into an instrument of the
spiritual; she leaves it all itscharacter as temporal means—to be used
with justice and charitycertainly, but in accordance with the measure of
justice andcharity that God has assigned to the kingdoms of this world,differing widely from the measure He has assigned to His ownKingdom
amongst men. To speak strictly, the temporal sword thenremains with the
State, which has the direct use of it; it belongsto the Church only in a
broad sense, and she cannot take theresponsibility for the temporal
character of the effects produced.

4. The Canonical Power Not Responsible For Bloodshed

To defend a spiritual value, inasmuch as in a consecrationalregime it
has become a civic value, by the temporal means at thedisposal of the
State, notably by recourse to war and thepunishment of death, is a task
that can doubtless be calledspiritual by reason of the thing defended,
but is of itself, andformally, a temporal one. It is carried out by the
State. But theChurch is concerned in it. How?

1. She is concerned, clearly enough, in this sense, that she asksand
commands the State to carry out, in its own name and on itsown
responsibility, this temporal task. She is acting then as theChurch, and
with spiritual authority. But the State, if it doesits duty and obeys,
will act as temporal authority and on its ownbehalf (not as instrument
of the Church and on behalf of theChurch), and the responsibility for
adopting severe measures willfall on the State and not on the Church.
The latter, writes L.Choupin, "is, by divine right, judge of the
obligations lying onthe faithful. She can therefore remind and admonish
the prince ofthe duty that lies on him to use force not only to apply
thetemporal penalties [589] inflicted by her, but also to punish byseverer
chastisements those grave religious offences which are, atthe same time,
social crimes,[590] a duty which the State is tofulfil in its own name,
and by no means in the name of, or by theauthority of, the Church. And
since the Church does not only judgeof duties in general, but also of
particular cases, she caneasily, in certain determinate circumstances,
admonish the prince,with sanctions at call (interdict, excommunication),
that he isbound in conscience to act with severity, to use the sword (in
hisown name, not in that of the Church) against the enemies ofreligion,
as he does against other disturbers of the public peace,of the social
order, e. g., against incendiaries. A prince who isgravely negligent in
this matter, as in all that touches the moralorder, is subject to the
jurisdiction of the Church."[591]

2. It is of the first importance here to state the role of theChurch
with precision. It belonged to the spiritual mission ofChrist to remind
men of what they owed directly to Caesar—thusHe confirmed Caesar's
authority, but did not act as a temporalking and make Caesar's rights
His own, or abolish the dividing-line between His kingdom and those of this
world. Similarly itbelongs to the spiritual mission of the Church to
remind the Stateof the duties of its temporal mission, to ask it, even
in somecircumstances to direct it, to act in accordance with its owntemporal
laws, for its own temporal ends, which are good: thus shesanctions and
defends the rights of the temporal, but does notbecome temporal herself
or exchange her own spiritual ways for thetemporal ways of the State.
Certainly, if a churchman counsels ordirects the State to do anything
perverse, this churchman (not theChurch: qui facit peccatum ex diabolo
est, 1. John iii. 8) willthen be responsible for the malice of the ends
and effects sought.But when the Church directs the State to obey its own
righteoustemporal laws (and here we assume that recourse to war and thedeath-penalty can be sometimes legitimate), she is in no way thecause
of, and consequently in no way responsible for, the harshand temporal
character of the means employed or effects sought.She can adopt and
approve this character, if you like, for thesake of the State, never for
her own sake; somewhat as God madetime for the sake of mutable things,
not for His own sake, sinceHe is unaffected by time. She cannot err to
the point ofconsidering the means, even just means, freely used by
temporalkingdoms, as suitable means for the Kingdom of Heaven; or ofconfusing
the righteousness of Caesar's business with that ofGod's business. Just
as a saint does well to direct a beginner toact in accordance with the
ways of beginners—ways that wouldsully his own soul and are not to be
ascribed to him withoutinjustice—so the Church does well to require
things from Stateswhich are just for States, but would not be just for
her. Onlythose could blame her who lack a sufficiently deep
understandingof the Gospel distinction between the spiritual society andtemporal societies.

3. The objections brought against this interpretation largelyarise, I
believe, from imagining the Church as utilizing the harshmeans of the
State—such as the punishment of death and war—as instruments for her own
spiritual ends. Evidently, if the swordcould be properly drawn for the
ends of the Church, then it wouldreally be the Church herself who drew
it, and the Church would beimmediately responsible (with an immediacy
not perhaps of contact,"supposital", but certainly of action,
of "virtue" which is moreimportant). On this hypothesis, the
Church as such would have theright, at least in an eminent manner, to
have recourse to thedeath penalty and to war. In the Middle Ages she
would haveeffectively dipped her hand in blood, and assumed theresponsibility
for bloodshedding.[592] That, I agree, was a verycommon view among the
theologians and canonists of theRenaissance. Suarez even calls it
"Catholic".[593] However, inthe eyes of modern theologians it
seems to be quite uncalled for.Its chief weakness lies in too closely
identifying the twosocieties, temporal and spiritual, and in failing to
notice thattheir likeness is merely analogical. It does not distinguish
withany precision between the privileges belonging to the clergy invirtue
of their jurisdictional power alone, and those that accruedto them
accidentally owing to the peculiar temporal organizationof medieval
times. We are left to conclude, moreover, that sincethe Church is a
perfect society she has as much right to use thesword as the State, even
if not in the same manner as the State.[594] The Church, it was said, possesses
it eminently; she takesas such the responsibility for the holy war
against the pagans andfor the extermination of the heretics; the forces
of the State areno more than her instrument. But this explanation of the
greathistorical events of the Middle Ages involved an abandonment ofthe
high conception of St. Augustine, who agreed indeed to acceptthe help of
the State, but only if it were spiritualized to startwith, so that, for
example, the Church was not dishonoured by theshedding of blood. And it
whittled down the profound distinctionmade in the Gospel between the
Kingdom of God, which does notdefend itself by arms, and the kingdoms of
this world, which maylegitimately do so.

For my own part, I wish to propose quite another view. I have saidthat
by reason of the spiritual values invested in the temporalcommon good in
a consecrational regime, it was this temporalcommon good itself which
the Church required to be defended, bytemporal means used in accordance
with their own laws. And if theorder of agents always corresponds to the
order of ends, theprincipal agent who bears the responsibility for the
defence ofthe temporal, can be only a temporal agent; subjected to theChurch as an autonomous cause of a lower order is subjected to acause
of a higher order, but not as an instrument is subjected toits principal
cause.

Does this cover the facts? Did the Church indeed descend nofurther
into the temporal?

She did not, that is if we speak strictly of the canonical power,of
the Church as such, of the Church that is Christianity and theKingdom of
God. But of course such strictly canonicalinterventions do not tell the
whole story of the influence of theclergy on the great events of
medieval history. Other prerogativeswere involved.

5. The Extra-Canonical Powers Of The Clergy

Since the canonical power is spiritual, the extra-canonical powershere
referred to cannot, in themselves, be other than temporal.

1. The existence of one of these is contested by nobody. Tosafeguard
the independence of his spiritual and apostolic powerthe Sovereign
Pontiff was led—in the eyes of the Middle Ages itwas the best solution—to
assume a temporal and political power.He was the head of the universal
Church; he became, besides, theprince of a Roman State. He had to assume
therefore all the caresof a temporal administration, to react by force
against internaldisorders (seditions, robberies, heresies and the rest)
or againstattacks by Christian princes or by Saracens. Hence too he had
tohave vassals who could be armed and mobilized when the security ofthe
Pontifical or of allied States was threatened. The whole ofthis vast
activity, which occupies so much of the attention ofhistorians, is, in
the eyes of theologians, a temporal andpolitical activity juxtaposed to
the spiritual and apostolic powerwith a view to protecting its exercise.
The Pope, as ruler of hisState, could, and could rightly, do many things
which he hadneither the right nor the power to do as ruler of the
Church. ThePontifical State was one of the kingdoms of this world for
whosesake it is allowable to take up arms.

So also in the case of the prince-bishops, we have to distinguisha
canonical power which they exercised as bishops in union withthe
Sovereign Pontiff; and a political power annexed to this, butpurely
accidentally—a power they exercised as vassals either ofthe Pontifical
State or, more usually, of the kings or emperors.

To the temporal power which the Popes and bishops exercised underany
of the regular titles just mentioned, we must add suchtemporal power as
they exercised under some provisional orexceptional title, in order to
supply, here and now, for theabsence of a legitimate temporal
government. "In certain provincesor independent towns, the civil
organization was either lacking ornot strong enough to repress these
disorders [of heresy]. Thecivil power defaulting, authority devolved
upon the Church, whotook the place of the prince and exercised his
power."[595]

2. Besides the civil principate of the States of the Church, didnot
the medieval Popes possess perhaps an extra-canonical power ofanother
kind, less onerous in character, but of still widerinfluence? I think
they did.

However much independent of each other the various medievalsocieties
were, they were all based on unity of faith and visiblemembership of the
Church. This amounted to an ontological bondbetween them. They all had
to defend an identical spiritual valueincorporated into the very
substance of their common good. Whenthis value was threatened, for
example by the progress of heresyor Saracen invasion, the common good
and ideal of each and all ofthem was simultaneously imperiled. They
could, in consequence,take up arms, and at need they were bound to do
so. The duty of sodoing evidently lay on the immediate temporal
authorities; and thePope, who measured its importance, could, in the
name of hisapostolic and spiritual power, draw their attention to it and
layit on their conscience. So much has been said already. Somethinghas
now to be added.

After Charlemagne the temporal authority in the West was againsplit
up. It did not remain in the same hands. The Empire did notcover all the
Christian countries. It was the greatest of them,perhaps, but not the
only one. The consequence of this state ofthings was a corresponding
disintegration of the power of defence.Each prince served the interests
of his own state and lost sightof the interests of Christendom. The
Popes, on the other hand,were well placed to grasp the structural
likeness of so manyconsecrational societies and the grandeur of their
commonideology. It was they, in fact, and not the princes, who in theeleventh century with Gregory VII and Urban II were alive to thetemporal
unity of the West, to the true nature and the true extentof Christendom.
When heresy and Islam tried to shake itsfoundations, they saw it as a
single entity, as a general good,superior to the good of each particular
society, something to bedefended by concerted temporal action
co-ordinating the efforts ofall societies, and undertaken for the safety
of the wholeChristian political order.

Could this temporal defence of Christendom be undertaken by thePopes
themselves? We know already that in virtue of theircanonical power they
could oblige Christian princes to defendtheir own respective societies.
But at this period there was nolonger any single prince responsible—practically
speaking—for the whole of the consecrational temporal order whom they couldhave charged with the duty of defending Christendom as such. Andyet
the task was urgent. What happened?

In default of a competent temporal authority, it was the Pope himself who,
under the pressure of events, was to take in hand,not the task of
constructing some novel empire on the ruins of theold, but the more
disinterested task, less trammeled by politicsbut political
nevertheless, of synchronising and co-ordinating theunequal efforts of
the Emperor, the Christian princes, and theknights. This power over the
length and breadth of Christendomwhich thus fell to him by way of
default and devolution was, nodoubt, not a complete political power
seeking, like the rest, tooccupy the field of technical and material
administration, anddestined to supplant the others. It was a genuine
temporal powernevertheless, effectively aiming at the maintenance of theconsecrational political order. It acted as a principal universalcause,
temporal in character, and utilizing more particulartemporal causes as
its instruments with a view to the universalcommon good of Christendom;
in other words, it was the Pope,considered now as protector of
Christendom, who bore the finalresponsibility for the temporal defence
of Christendom.

If we try to explain it in terms of the canonical power, the roleof
the Holy See in the organization of the Crusade wouldconstitute, as M.
A. Fliche says, "an historical paradox, so muchin contradiction
does it appear to the traditional order. This, atthe end of the eleventh
century, always conformed to theprinciples enunciated in the famous
letter of Gelasius I, oftencited by canonists and by polemical writers
of various tendencies,laying down that there are two powers by which
this world ischiefly governed, the sacred authority of the Pontiffs and
thepower of the kings, the first set over the spiritual and thesecond
over the temporal, in such a way that spiritual action iswithdrawn from
the temporal domain and that the knights of theLord are but very little
concerned with secular affairs. If,conformably with this celebrated
text, the Gregorian theses claimfor the sacerdotal power the right to
control the lay powerratione peccati, they in no way propose to
substitute the Pope forthe Emperor in the temporal direction of the
world; they do notdeny to the latter the power, always recognized as
his, to protectChristendom against its enemies within and
without."[596]

In reality, continues Fliche, who seems here to be resorting tothe
explanation I have just proposed, "it was the lack of theimperial
power in the Mediterranean lands from the tenth centuryonwards, which
led the Holy See to envisage means to protect thepeople, whose faith was
threatened no less than their materialinterests, and to organize
resistance". The first Pope whorealized the gravity of the
Mussulman peril, John VIII, never atany time contemplated, in spite of
the small success of hisappeals to the Emperor, the possibility of
substituting himselffor the latter to assure the defence of Western
Christendom. Thesituation changed after the fall of the Carolingian
Empire during the pontificate of John X (914-928). The vacancy in the Empire ledthe Papacy "to overstep the limits assigned to its function.Undoubtedly,
it is difficult to say exactly by what title John Xwas able to act;[597]
it remains true nevertheless that for thefirst time, under his
pontificate, the direction of the waragainst the Saracens fell to the
Holy See". With the territorialrecession of the Germanic Empire,
the struggle against Islambecame the appanage of the Normans in Sicily
and of the Frenchchivalry in Spain. The Papacy could not remain
indifferent to thismovement, "in which temporal preoccupations had,
no doubt, theirpart, but in which the Christian faith was equally at
stake".The last stage was reached by Gregory VII with the
excommunicationof Henry IV.

To resume, "the Council of Clermont is the logical and normalupshot
of a whole series of circumstances occupying two centuries;the fall of
the Carolingian Empire led the Papacy to organize thewar against Islam
in Italy; the territorially incomplete characterof the Imperial
restoration of 962 explains why the GermanicEmperors neglected a peril
which did not threaten their owndominions, and why the Papacy assumed
the direction of a war whichso deeply affected the spiritual interests
under its care;finally, the Imperial schism of 1080 completed the
removal of theEmperor, then excommunicated, from an enterprise which the
HolySee seemed to be marked out to conduct, owing to the collapse ofthe
Carolingian tradition".

The apparent historical paradox noted by Fliche is easilyexplained if
we admit, as he seems himself to suggest, that thefailure of the Empire
would necessarily lead the Pope to subjointo his apostolic power, held
from St. Peter, an extra-canonicalpower of tutelage over Christendom.

Over and above the spiritual power which he wielded as the Rock ofthe
Church, the Vicar of Christ, and the Pastor of His sheep, Ibelieve
therefore that in the Middle Ages he had two quitedistinct temporal or
extra-canonical powers; one by which he wasPrince of the States of the
Church (of which we shall speakagain); and another, less complete but
wider, by which he becamethe defender, the protector, the guardian of
Christendom.[598]When he acted as head of the Church and for the defence
of theChurch, he could not sanction bloodshed. It was otherwise when heacted in defence of temporal interests, as Prince of the States ofthe
Church or as protector of Christendom; for Christendom, likethe States
of the Church, was of the kingdoms that defendthemselves by arms.

It is now possible to complete what has been written from thetheological
standpoint on the distinction of the two swords. Ihave said that the
Church as such, the Pope as such, can haverecourse to the secular arm in
two ways: either asking it tobecome an instrument of the spiritual,
functioning for spiritualends; or treating it as an autonomous temporal
cause, left to itsown laws, and functioning for temporal ends. We must
now add thatthe Pope, not as Pope, but as protector of Christendom and
actingas a principal temporal agent, could, up to a point, set theprinces
in motion as instruments of Christendom; he was thenresponsible even for
the temporal character of the effectsproduced and ends procured. (And if
the cause was just, he couldfurther it, as Pope, by announcing spiritual
rewards or penalties.)

6. A "Theocratic" Or "Consecrational" Regime?

Should the regime of medieval Christendom be called a theocracy?The
word, in fact, is often applied to it by historians. But itexplains
nothing, and leads to many inaccuracies andmisunderstandings.

If the word is taken etymologically, a "theocratic" regime means agovernment directly exercised by God, whether immediately, as inthe
earthly paradise, or mediately, by ministers acting in somemeasure as
His instruments.

The spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, the Kingdom of God,could
rightfully be called a theocracy, a Christocracy. It must beremembered
however that this jurisdiction is not an univocalpower, that it is
distributed over several distinct degrees. ForGod governs in one way
through the Apostles (extraordinaryjurisdiction, with the privilege of
oral or scripturalinspiration), and in another through their successors
(permanentjurisdiction). And He governs in one way through the
declaratorypower, assisted in an absolute manner—a power whose role isakin to that of a pure instrument—and in another way throughthe
canonical power, assisted in a manner far less strict andmerely
prudential. Now it is in virtue of this last power that thePope
intervenes in affairs that in a general way are temporal, buthave become
accidentally spiritual, ratione peccati. The word "theocracy", if used
to designate God's government of His Church,must not tempt us to forget
these different planes.

Moreover, nobody applies the word theocracy to the spiritualjurisdiction:
it is always understood of a temporal governmentcarried on in the name
of the Deity. Littre proposes to call agovernment theocratic if the
rulers of a nation are regarded asgods or as the ministers of God. But
who would call St. Paul'sdoctrine theocratic when he teaches that the
temporal authoritiesare the "ministers of God" (Rom. xiii. 4)?
Let us say ratherthat a theocracy exists when temporal values, subject
inthemselves to the common providential government, are taken out oftheir
proper rank to be strictly associated with religious valuesfor which God
provides a special providence: God then interveningdirectly in order,
for example, to prescribe the form of thegovernment, to lay down the
lines of its action, to protect it bymiracles, etc. To put it more
exactly, a theocracy exists when thetemporal authority is the vicar of
God directly and not of thepeople. And there will be a pseudo-theocracy
if the belief in allthis is based on illusion.

Up to a point the regime of the ancient Hebrew people was atheocracy.
In those times the Kingdom of God, spread all over theearth, found
nevertheless its clearest expression, the highestform of its visibility,
in the very body of a race, of a nation,over which God kept particular
watch by sending it prophets andassisting it with miracles. (Yet note in
passing that thesociotemporal good, however strictly linked with the
spiritual,was not identified with it, so that at times the first was
allowedto suffer for the sake of the second. Moreover, as Cajetan notes,the king is made in order to represent the people and the people'spower,
whether he be made by the people, as Saul was, or given byGod, as was
David. In both cases he is vicar of the people, notdirectly of God, non
Dei immediate.)[599]

Can the regime of consecrational Christendom be likened to that ofthe
Hebrew people? Christ sharply differentiated it. Henceforthone was no
longer a child of God by carnal descent. The Kingdom ofGod no longer
borrowed its visibility from that of the nation; ithad a visibility of
its own, a visibility of a new order,supranational. The duality of the
things of Caesar and the thingsof God, "of the apostolic dignity
and the royal dignity"[600] ofthe pontifical authority "which
presides over spiritual things",and the royal authority "which
presides over carnal things"[601]is vigorously asserted. If the
spiritual power intervenesexceptionally in temporal things ratione
peccati, the temporalnevertheless retains, both in right and in fact,
its own structureand its own laws. That being so, there can be no
question of atheocracy. As to the mistaken theory which would grant the
Vicarof Christ, as such, a direct canonical power over the temporalorder,
it could represent nothing but a pseudo-theocracy.

But how is one to designate the government exercised by the Popesin
medieval Christendom in virtue of their extra-canonical powers?They
acted, as we have said, both as rulers of the States of theChurch and as
protectors of Christendom. Fliche, who spoke atfirst of a
"theocratic government",[602] afterwards dropped theexpression
and adopted "sacerdotal government".[603] We mightspeak
perhaps of "hierocracy".[604] These words remain exterior,descriptive,
material. They indicate that the Pope has somegovernment of temporal
things. They do not say whether he governsthem in virtue of his
canonical or of his extra-canonical power.

In any event the Pope's government was not the only government. Itdid
not exclude that of the princes, either in right or in fact.It cannot
then serve to characterize the general system ofauthority in medieval
Christendom. Let us say, for this is thephrase that seems preferable,
that it was a consecrational regime.

7. Table Of The Powers Of Medieval Christendom

On opposite page, in tabular form, are the various jurisdictionalpowers,
canonical or infra-canonical, appearing in medievalChristendom.

[this is the diagram on page 261, but put in the form of anindented
tree for e-text]

Powers:

1 Canonical or spiritual, directed to:
1 .1 .1 the defence of the spiritual, undertaking a spiritual taskfor
which it bears the direct responsibility, and executes either:
1 .1 .1 .1 immediately and by its own action. . . 1
1 .1 .1 .2 mediately, by putting the secular arm in motion andmoderating
its exercise as a pure instrument of the spiritual. . .2
1 .1 .2 the inspiration of the temporal, commanding the seculararm
with the special insistence in a consecrational regime, toundertake its
temporal task, as an autonomous cause, by its ownmeans and under its own
responsibility. . . 3
2 temporal, conceded to:
2 .1 .1 clerics, but on extra-canonical grounds:
2 .1 .1 .1 for spiritual ends:
2 .1 .1 .1 .1 civil principate over the States of the Church,juxtaposed
to the supreme canonical power as condition of its freeexercise. . . 4
2 .1 .1 .1 .2 protectorate of Christendom, juxtaposed to thesupreme
canonical power by devolution for the temporal defence ofconsecrational
Christendom. . . 5
2 .1 .1 .2 in a purely accidental way: temporal power of thebishop
who is prince either by regular title or provisionally andby default of
others. . . 6
2 .1 .1 .32 .1 .2 laymen. . . 7

In Suarezian terms the power exercised immediately by the Churchherself
would be called "direct", and that which she exercisesmediately,
"indirect". Then we are led to classify together underthe name
of "indirect power over the temporal for the sake of thespiritual"
the powers I have numbered 2, 3 (possibly 4) and 5.

It seems better, if we are to have recourse to the distinction ofpowers
into "direct" and "indirect", to understand it according tothe way in which the canonical power assumes responsibility, andnot
according as it acts of itself or by way of the secular arm.Then the
"direct power" will be that in which the canonical powerassumes
responsibility, whether acting itself or by the seculararm (1 and 2).
And the "indirect power" will be that in which aduty is laid
on the temporal power to act as a second cause, byits own means, for its
own ends, and under its own responsibility(no. 3). In the first case, in
which the role of the secular armis that of a pure instrument, the power
of the Church is, ineffect, "direct"; it is only in the second
case, in which therole of the secular arm is that of an autonomous and
responsiblecause, that the power of the Church is really
"indirect". In anyevent, the distinction of powers into direct
and indirect can bearseveral different senses, and when we use it we
should specifywhich we have in mind.

If one rejects, along with a goodly number of modern theologianswho
find support in St. Augustine, the systematization of Suarezand of the
great Inquisitors,[605] one does so the better toproclaim the
transcendence of the canonical power, and todistinguish it from the
other powers, legitimate certainly, but ofa lower order, whose means and
ends are temporal—powers thatmay co-exist with it in the same subject,
but could not beidentified with it without error.

In condemning those who refuse the Church an "indirect temporalpower"
the twenty-fourth proposition of the Syllabus [606] ismeant to affirm
that besides the direct power over things that areessentially religious,
the Church has a jurisdiction over thingswhich, being in themselves and
in general temporal, becomespiritual incidentally and on occasion. There
is no question ofcourse of disputing this power: the sole question is
whether itshould be called "spiritual" or "temporal"
whether it is "direct" or "indirect". The answer seems to me
to be clear: itis formally "spiritual", and we should put its
activities undernos. 1 and 2. It is only materially, and therefore
improperly,that it can be called "temporal," or
"indirect". Choupin, in hiscommentary on this proposition of
the Syllabus, says excellently:"The object of the jurisdiction, in
the case in point, is thetemporal only in so far as it enters the
religious sphere, andthus ceases to be purely temporal. Such is the
indirect power." And again: "By reason of the object on which it
bears, theindirect power is sometimes qualified as temporal; but in
reality,in its nature, in its origin and aim, it is truly spiritual, andit is a power of jurisdiction properly so-called."[607]

These distinctions were by no means all of them recognized andexpressly
noted by the medieval writers. They were interlocked,not to say jumbled
up together, in the necessities of action.This, however, does not
matter. If they are correct they are inthe line of the common doctrine
of the Church where they havealways existed, at least implicitly. Their
formulation even ifbelated, may throw light on the past, and enable us
to refer eacheffect—the Crusades, the suppression of heresy, the
segregation of the Jews—to its proper cause; temporal effects to thetemporal
power (whether held by clerics or laymen), spiritualeffects to the
spiritual power (held by clerics alone); enable us,in a word, to
discern, in the immense collective effort of theMiddle Ages, and in the
explanations which the Middle Ages havethemselves attached to them, what
properly belongs to Christianityand what to Christendom.

3. The Coercive Power Of The Church And Its Medieval Exercise

Some of the problems concerned with the coercive power are purelytheological.
Others are mixed, and belong as much to history as totheology.

A. Theological Questions: The Coercive Power In Itself

1. The End Of The Coercive Power

The question of the coercive power must be examined in the lightof
the severities of the Last Judgement, in which the Son of Man,coming
with all His angels, and sitting on the throne of Hisglory, will put the
good on His right hand and the wicked on Hisleft, to send the latter to
eternal torment and the others toeternal life (Matt. xxv. 41-46). If we
strike out of the Gospelsuch passages as this, or as those where it is
said of one whoscandalizes a child, that it were "better for him
that a millstoneshould be hanged about his neck and that he should be
drowned inthe depths of the sea" (Matt. xviii. 6), or that the
workers ofiniquity shall be cast by the angels "into the furnace of
fire,where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt.
xiii.42)—if, in a word, we cease to believe in the terribleseverities
of the next world, then it is quite clear that we shallno longer be able
to understand the stern penalties which, whenjustice demands, the Church
uses in this world in order to avoidthem.[608] But then the problem will
be shifted, and the thing tobe debated will no longer be the coercive
power but the much morefundamental question of the reality of its ends.
And here theGospel is clear. Those whom the Gospel scandalizes will
certainlybe scandalized by the doctrine of the Church.

Since they are ordained to the salvation of souls the penaltiesimposed
by the Church will, in respect of their end, be alwaysspiritual, that is
to say supernatural.

But these penalties, always spiritual by reason of their end, canbe
looked at in themselves, materially, intrinsically. From thissecondary
standpoint they will appear now as spiritual, now astemporal. Spiritual,
in the sense, this time, of moral andreligious penalties, of
"reserved" penalties, proper to theChurch: excommunication is
a penalty proper to the Church,intrinsically spiritual, involving
effects of which some arepartly visible (exclusion from active
participation in theliturgy, from reception of the sacraments, and so
forth), and someinvisible (loss of the benefit of indulgences and of the
suffragesof the Church). Temporal: these are physical, bodily penalties,the only ones the State has at its disposal; but the Church, onits
own sole authority, and in a measure that remains to bedetermined, can
have recourse to penalties of this sort; whichthus become
"common" to Church and State; penalties that directlytouch the
liberty, the goods, the body of the delinquent areintrinsically
temporal. This division of ecclesiastical penaltiesinto spiritual and
temporal is recognized by the Code of CanonLaw: "The Church has, of
herself and essentially, independently ofall human authority, the right
to coerce the guilty who come underher authority by penalties both
spiritual and temporal."[609]

2. The Root Of The Coercive Power

A second Gospel truth rules the question of the coercive power,namely
that Peter received the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven onearth, and that
he and the Apostles have a power to bind and loosein this Kingdom such
that their decisions are ratified on high.They will therefore have power
to use sanctions, for everylegislative institution—unlike a merely
consultative one—carries with it a judicial authority and a coercive
authority. Ofcourse, if we deny the divine institution by Christ of alegislative power, we also ipso facto deny the coercive power. Buthere
again, through the Church, it is the Gospel that is reallyattacked.

Nor should we be faithful to Scripture if we said that it confinesthe
coercive power of the Church to sanctions in themselvesspiritual. We
have only to reflect on Jesus' words that "he thatwill not hear the
Church "is to be regarded as "a heathen and apublican"
(Matt. xviii. 17), to understand at once that on thehypothesis of a
world, or of a region, where the Church isuniversally received and
honoured, the man regarded as a pagan anda publican would be kept out of
public life and shunned bysociety; so that the sentence of the Church
would necessarily beaccompanied by a temporal penalty. The same applies
to the passagewhere St. Paul, without wishing to oblige the Christians
ofCorinth to break off all relations with their pagan compatriots,since
then they would have to "go out of this world", made itincumbent
on them not to keep company with any of the baptized whomight be a
fornicator, covetous, a drunkard or a thief, indeed"not so much as
to eat with such an one" (1 Cor. v. 9-11).Elsewhere the Apostle
orders Timothy to reprove "before all" thosethat fell short of
their duties "that the rest also may have fear" (1 Tim. v. 20).
What does that mean if not that they are to bepublicly humiliated and
thus subjected to temporal disadvantages?Similarly he orders that
"if any man obey not our word by thisepistle, note that man and do
not keep company with him, that hemay be ashamed" (2 Thess. iii.
14).

Temporal penalties are still more directly in evidence in the caseof
the incestuous Corinthian. Paul judges "with the power of ourLord
Jesus" that this man be "delivered to Satan for thedestruction
of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the dayof our Lord Jesus
Christ" (1 Cor. v. 5). The words "delivered toSatan for the
destruction of the flesh "mean more than a simplyspiritual
sanction; they signify that the excommunication wouldhand the guilty one
over to the power of the devil who would evenafflict his flesh.[610] St.
Paul decrees the same punishmentagainst Hymenaeus and Alexander whom he
"delivered up to Satan,that they may learn not to blaspheme"
(1 Tim. 1. 20).

Must we go further and maintain that in these last two cases theApostle
envisages bodily punishments in a direct and immediatemanner and not
simply as results of excommunication? Somecommentators believe so. They
think that just as the Lord left theApostles the privilege of casting
out devils, so He left them thepower to compel the devils to chastise
sinners, and that St. Paulordered the Church at Corinth to deliver the
shameless one toSatan's vexations.[611] They compare this passage with
that inwhich the Apostle strikes Elymas blind (Acts xiii. 8-12), and
thatin which Ananias and Sapphira are punished (v. I-II).[612] Theepisode
of Jesus casting out the money-changers from the Templemight here be
added.

Even if this last explanation be adopted we should recognize thatit
is not expressly said in Scripture that the Church, in virtueof her
ordinary jurisdiction, can have recourse to corporalpunishments. I have
no desire to force the texts. It is enough toremark (1 ) that Scripture
expressly recognizes that the Churchhas power to promulgate
intrinsically spiritual penalties, even ifthey be visible, such as
excommunication; (2) that in the divineplan sinners deserve formidable
corporal penalties even herebelow; and (3) that Scripture recognizes the
Church's power to setthese heavy temporal penalties in motion by way ofexcommunication.

All this greatly helps us to understand that the Church, which hasan
efficacious power to legislate expressly indicated in Scripture—and
there we have the source of the coercive power—will havethe right of
direct recourse (with moderation however, as we shallsoon see) even to
penalties which, while spiritual as regards thereasons that justify them
and the ends they aim at, may beintrinsically and materially physical.

3. Effects Of Sanctions On The Guilty

It is not to be supposed that any man can be made virtuous inspite of
himself, but fear of punishment may give him pause on thedownward path;
it can prevent him from harming others; it can evenmake him give up the
sin that has held him, and so at last to willwith a good heart what
previously he did not will. "One who is insin" says St.
Thomas, "has no longer a healthy taste, and is notto be snatched
from sin by the sweetness of the divine good sincehis heart is infected
with an inordinate love of self; butpunishments that cross his nature
and thwart his will can snatchhim back from sin."[613] That applies
to the thought of futurepunishments inflicted by divine justice; but it
applies also tothose that can be inflicted in this world by a legitimateauthority, whether they be intrinsically spiritual orintrinsically
corporal.

Of course, the use of coercive power, if imprudent, immoderate, orunjust,
can have the worst consequences; but when it is prudent,moderate and
just it can be salutary and useful and that even forthe guilty one
himself.

4. Whom Does The Coercive Power Reach?

Everything can be thrown into confusion and all kinds ofiniquities
fathered on the Church, unless we are clear about thoseto whom the
coercive power applies.

The Unbaptized: The authentic coercive power of the Church has noauthority
to force the faith on those outside. The only right theChurch has over
adepts, whether of paganism, Judaism, or Islam,who, not being baptized,
are no subjects of hers, is to proclaimthe Gospel to them peaceably, and
ultimately to protect those ofthem who may be converted. But the Church
never desires to imposethe faith on them by force. Faith must be free;
you cannot implantit in a soul by force. "You can force a man to
enter a church, toapproach the altar, to receive the Sacrament; but you
cannot forcehim to believe", said St. Augustine.[614] So also St.
Thomas:"Among unbelievers there are some who have never received
thefaith, such as the heathen and the Jews; and these are by no meansto be compelled to the faith in order that they may believe,because
belief depends on the will [quia credere voluntatis est].But they should
be compelled, if possible, by the faithful so thatthey may not hinder
the faith by their blasphemies or by theirevil persuasions, or even by
their open persecutions. It is forthis reason that Christ's faithful
often wage war withunbelievers, not indeed for the purpose of forcing
them to believe—because even if they were to conquer them and take themprisoner, they should still leave them free to believe if theywill—but
in order to prevent them from hindering the faith ofChrist."[615]
The Council of Trent in its turn, recalls that "the Church never passes any
judgment on those who have not firstentered her through the door of
baptism".[616] And the code ofCanon Law declares generally that
purely ecclesiastical lawscannot bind the unbaptized.[617] We see what
has to be thoughtfrom a Catholic standpoint of the forced conversions of
the Saxonsby Charlemagne, of the Jews and Moors by the Catholic kings.

The Baptized: Of these we must distinguish two classes.

First, there are those who, having been born in dissidence,continue
there in good faith. St. Augustine refuses to considerthem as guilty,
and consequently to give them the name, alwaysinfamous in his
vocabulary, of heretics: "Whoever defends hisopinion, however
erroneous or perverse, without pertinacity,especially when this opinion
is not the fruit of his ownpresumption but is inherited from parents
seduced and carried awayinto error, if he honestly seeks the truth and
is ready to yieldto it when found, this man should not be reckoned among
theheretics."[618] Such men are incipiently members of the Church.But on account of their good faith the coercive power of theChurch
does not touch them any more than it touches the non-baptized. Thinking of them,
but without here wishing to separatethem from the unbaptized—for he
has just been speaking oftolerance of different religions by the State—Leo
XIII recallsthat: "in fact the Church is wont to take earnest heed
that noone shall be forced to embrace the Catholic faith against hiswill,
for, as St. Augustine wisely reminds us, man cannot believeotherwise
than of his own free will".[619] What therefore hasbeen said of the
unbaptized applies also to these baptized"incipient members"
of the Church. There can be no question offorcing them to believe, or to
observe the Church's laws. All thatis allowable is to prevent them from
corrupting the faith of thehumble.

The second class is that of the baptized who, having been born inthe
Church, have culpably deserted her. These are they whom theolder Doctors—Augustine
or Aquinas—call heretics orschismatics. They are at one and the same
time still of the Churchand already no longer of the Church. In their
case we must speakof a "repudiated" or "servile"
membership of the Church.

It is clear to start with that in the measure in which they areaggressors
and corrupt the faith of the humble, the Church has aright to defend
herself against them.

But the coercive power could reach them on another count, not nowas
aggressors but as guilty—supposing this guilt established.The coercive
power might therefore intervene for two purposes.

The first would be to repress the guilty so as to defend andsafeguard
the common good.[620]

The second will be to correct the guilty and induce them to fulfilthe
promises they have forgotten, to their own prejudice. For weare free to
make vows, but having made them ought to keep them;and we are free to
opt for the faith, but having done so ought toremain faithful. Here St.
Thomas recalls what St. Augustine saidin his letter to Count Boniface:
"What do these people mean bycrying out are we not free to believe
or not to believe? Whom didChrist compel? They should remember that
Christ at first compelledPaul and afterwards taught him."[621]

The Church wishes to make them begin in the suffering ofsegregation
what she hopes they will afterwards fulfil in love.

5. The Nature Of Ecclesiastical Sanctions

"Because sin is an inordinate act, it is evident that whoever sinscommits
an offence against an order: wherefore he is put down bythat same order,
which repression is punishment. Accordingly, mancan be punished with a
threefold punishment corresponding to theorders to which the human will
is subject. In the first place, aman's nature is subjected to the order
of his own reason;secondly, it is subject to the order of another man
who governshim either in spiritual or in temporal matters, as a member
eitherof the State or of the household: thirdly, it is subjected to theuniversal order of the divine government. . . Wherefore he incursa
threefold punishment: one, inflicted by himself, viz., remorseof
conscience; another, inflicted by men; and a third inflicted byGod."[622]
St. Thomas here distinguishes the spiritual socialorder and the temporal
social order. We must therefore similarlydistinguish spiritual sanctions
from temporal sanctions. Betweenthe spiritual order and the temporal
order, both of them howevervisible, between the law that aims at
friendship of man with God,and the law that aims at friendship of men
with each other,[623]there is, properly speaking, no univocity, but a
likeness ofanalogy or proportionality; similarly between offences
against theorder of the Church and offences against the order of the
State,between the sanctions of the Church and the sanctions of theState,
there is no univocity, but only a likeness of analogy orproportionality.

The spiritual or supernatural order is better than the temporal.To
build itself up it has need of faith, charity and the infusedvirtues, of
everything in the world that is freest. It draws farmore than does the
temporal order on the reserves of generosity inmen. It uses earthly
realities as the basis in this world for thepotencies of grace, as a
temple for the divine presence, and inorder eventually to raise them to
the height of its own law bygiving them a share in the splendours of the
transfiguration—whereas the temporal order uses these same earthly realities
onlyto erect perishable social structures which end in surrender tothe
law of matter and are swept away by the revolutions ofhistory. In a
word, the spiritual social order, the Church, is akingdom in this world,
but not, like the temporal social order, ofthis world. Because of all
these differences, it is fitting thatthe laws that rule it and the
sanctions that protect it, even whenthey look to material means and
intrinsically temporal penalties,should refrain from using them in the
manner, always more or lessharsh, of the State, but only in ways more
moderate, pure, andholy. "My kingdom is not of this world. If my
kingdom were ofthis world my servants would certainly strive that I
should not bedelivered to the Jews; but now my kingdom is not from
hence" (John xviii. 36). It would be going too far to cite this text toestablish
that the Church should never be defended by the seculararm. But it
clearly means that, when it becomes just to defend itby the secular arm,
it is never just to do so in the manner of thekingdoms of this world.

It would be therefore an error to put the sanctions of thespiritual
society and the sanctions of the political society onthe same level.
Even when they coincide materially—if, forexample, the Church should
approve penalties intrinsicallytemporal (such as fines, imprisonment,
etc. )—these sanctionswould differ profoundly in their justification,
in their nature,and in their ends. We may see an indication of this
difference, asign that the Church uses even intrinsically temporal
penalties ina spirit different from that of the State, in the fact that
whilerecognizing that under certain conditions the death-penalty can bejustified and legitimately decreed by the secular power,[624] andthat
in certain conditions war can be justly waged, shenevertheless
absolutely forbids all clerics and all who holdecclesiastical power, to
have any hand themselves in the heaviestand most terrible of
punishments, the punishment of death.Ecclesia horret a sanguine. The
reason for this, explains St.Thomas, is that the shedding of blood, even
supposing it entirelyjust, is profoundly repugnant to those who,
commemorating Christ'ssacrifice, have a mission "not to slay or
shed blood, but ratherto be ready to shed their own blood for Christ, so
as to imitatein deed what they portray in their ministry. For this
reason ithas been decreed that those who shed blood, even without sin,become irregular".[625]

We should fall into an opposite error if we denied that theChurch's
power of coercion could cover intrinsically temporalpenalties. For
although the Church is spiritual, she is notinvisible or outside this
world; she is visible and in the world.Her spirituality does not consist
in eliminating visiblerealities; it consists in utilizing them, not
doubtless as theState does, but otherwise than the State does, with
greaterpurity, greater elevation of mind, and greater holiness than theState. Hence she has often claimed the power in question. In hisEncyclical
Quanta Cura of 8th December 1864, Pius IX condemnedthose who asserted
that "the Church has no power to constrain law-breakers with temporal
penalties".[626] More recently, the Codeof Canon Law, as we have
seen, has recalled that the Church has,of herself, independently of any
human authority whatever, theright to constrain her delinquent subjects
"by penalties, whethertemporal or spiritual".[627]

To hold that the Church cannot make use of intrinsically temporalpunishments
is to forget that she is a visible society; to holdthat she can do so in
just the same way as the State does is toforget that she is a spiritual
society.

6. For What Exercise Of The Coercive Power Is The Church, Understood Formally
And Theologically, Responsible?

If "the Church" be taken to mean simply the sum-total ofchurchmen,
or even the sum-total of Christians, she couldundoubtedly be blamed for
many sins and iniquities which it is theduty of every Christian to
condemn and not to justify. The name "Church" is then taken so
materially that all the sins ofChristians become part of her make-up. It
is not thus, but alwaysformally, that we understand the Church in this
enquiry. Thechurchman, like the simplest of the faithful, belongs to her
byreason of what is holy in him, not by reason of his sins. We shallsay,
from this standpoint, that the visible Church may indeedcontain sinners,
but not sins. "He that committeth sin is of thedevil; for the devil
sinneth from the beginning. For this purposethe Son of God appeared,
that he might destroy the works of thedevil. Whosoever is born of God
committeth not sin: for his seedabideth in him, and he cannot sin,
because he is born of God. Inthis the children of God are manifest, and
the children of thedevil" (1 John iii. 8-10).

The Church therefore is not to be held responsible for every modeof
exercising the coercive power, but for that only which isvirtuous, not
prompted by passion but ruled by justice, withseverity when right reason
demands it, and with clemency when itpermits.

Once more therefore we can never seek to lay on the Church theinnumerable
sins of those of her children who openly disobey her,or who, feigning
exterior obedience, betray her spirit.

In her Code of Canon Law the Church recalls the spirit in whichthe
coercive power should be used. Having declared that "she has atrue
and native right, independent of all human authority, toapply constraint
to her culpable subjects, inflicting on thempunishments, spiritual or
even temporal", she draws attention atonce to the warning of the
Council of Trent: "Let the bishops andother ordinaries remember
that they are pastors, not persecutors,that they should rule their
subjects, not lord it over them, butlove them as sons and brothers, and
try to turn them from evilways by advice and exhortations, for fear of
having to be severewhen they sin. But when human frailty has led them to
fall intosin, let the bishops, conformably with the word of the Apostle,reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine, sincesinners
are often more easily brought back to the right way bybenignity than by
sternness, by persuasion than by threats, bycharity than by authority.
But if, on account of the gravity ofthe sin, chastisement becomes
inevitable, then let sternness betempered with gentleness, justice with
mercy, severity withsweetness, that necessary and wholesome discipline
may bepreserved without undue harshness, that those corrected may amend,or at least, if they will not come to a better mind, that othersmay
be deterred by the salutary example of their punishment."[628]

From this we may see that it is only the virtuous use of thecoercive
power that the Church takes upon herself.

Even when virtuous, this use will not be infallible in every givencase.
For judicial sentences belong to the domain of particulardecisions where
error is always possible. The divine assistance ishere assured, not for
each individual case in its individuality,but only in general and for
the due functioning of the whole. Wecan imagine, as an extreme case, a
sentence of excommunicationprudently and virtuously pronounced, but
falling by sheer mistakeon an innocent person. The moralists say that at
bottom such anexcommunication would be invalid, since where there is no
offence,that is to say no morally imputable violation of a law,[629] noecclesiastical sentence properly so-called can be pronounced; andthat
no one would be bound to obey it, for example by refrainingfrom the
sacraments, save only for the scandal that mightotherwise be caused. We
can even imagine a case, unlikely perhaps,but possible—not that of
Joan of Arc, who was condemned by menwhose hearts were far from clean—of
a judicial sentence,motivated by the purest love of justice, which by
some unavoidablemisapprehension, shall have declared heretical and
delivered tothe secular arm one whose error was in fact not culpable,
whosedeath was magnanimous, whose charity was heroic, and whosesanctity
would be later on proclaimed; so that from both sides,that of the judge
and that of the accused, there would be equallove of God and desire for
justice. Such misunderstandings arealways possible here below. Love
might even be increased by them:aquae multae non potuerunt extinguere
charitatem.

B. Mixed Questions: The Exercise Of The Coercive Power In History, And The
Inquisition

1. Recourse Had To The Secular Arm Particularly For Penalties Lesser Than
That Of Death

a. The Church's Rights

The means of temporal coercion at the disposal of the Church—fines,
deprivation of benefices, segregation, internment in amonastery,
imprisonment—are limited, and their use commonlydifficult and sharply
restricted. It is the State that has themost effective means to hand:
exile, confiscation of goods,perpetual imprisonment and so forth. When
the Church wishes todeal with her rebellious subjects, can she approach
the State andnot merely beg, but require it to punish them?

Yes: but only in certain circumstances.

The Church certainly believes that she possesses this right. Thefourteenth
proposition of John Hus, condemned at the Council ofConstance, asserts
that to deliver to the secular arm those whodespise ecclesiastical
censures, is to imitate the Priests,Scribes and Pharisees who gave up
Christ to Pilate under the pleathat they were not allowed to put anyone
to death (John xviii.31).[630] The thirty-second question proposed by
the Council ofConstance to the followers of Wycliff and Hus asked
whether theyadmitted that "when the disobedience and insolence of
theexcommunicated increased, their prelates and spiritual rulerscould
make the excommunication heavier, impose an interdict andcall on the
secular arm [brachium saeculare invocandi]".[631]The Council of
Trent provided that women living publicly in sincould be driven out of a
town or diocese, "by recourse, ifnecessary, to the secular
arm".[632] The Code of Canon Lawstipulates that "offences
against the law of the Church alone,are, of their nature, within the
cognisance of the ecclesiasticalauthority alone, which, when it judges
it necessary or opportune,can claim the help of the secular
arm".[633] Finally, the RomanBullarium testifies to numerous cases
of resort to the seculararm.[634]

What circumstances are needed to justify such a recourse?

From the standpoint of the Church as calling for them, it sufficesthat
the steps in question are really apt and effectual to achievethe desired
spiritual good. But that is not all. From thestandpoint of the State, on
whom the Church calls, otherconditions are required. I shall attempt to
define them. Since theproper end of the temporal power is the temporal
common good, theonly acts that can be asked of it will be those which in
the longrun will contribute to the maintenance and advancement of thetemporal common good. "Reignative" prudence,[635] thecharacteristic
virtue of the political ruler, will not allow himto engage in other
enterprises than those directed to thepolitical well-being of his
country; this of course beingunderstood in the highest and most generous
sense, not in anegoistic and basely utilitarian way. "A certain
measure oftemporal success is postulated as a matter of course "by
temporalefforts and means. "Whoso loses his soul for my sake"
OurLord says "shall find it again." He did not say:
"Whoso loseshis kingdom shall save it." St. Louis was an
excellentadministrator of his kingdom; he added to its power andprosperity."[636]
Even when a country sacrifices itself todefend its fellows in
Christendom, it is still a political good—for heroism, fraternal friendship,
fidelity are political goods—the memory of which will be cherished among men.
And even when apower intervenes to punish "an offence that breaks
no law but theChurch's", this would be in view of a higher
political advantage,and because it is known that the Church alone can
speed the adventof a true humanism and a full political life. (Thus for
example inanother domain, the State could contribute to the budget of apurely spiritual cult, because of its beneficial effect on thetemporal.)
Could the Church, would the Church, ever ask of thehead of a state, even
for the best of causes, an intervention thatwould dismember this state,
give it over to civil war, forexample, and political ruin? No. She could
strengthen and exaltthe aims of reignative prudence, but not bring them
simply tonothing. It follows that she cannot legitimately call for thesupport of the secular arm save when some immediately temporalgood—a
very exalted one perhaps, such as the temporal good ofall Christendom—is
to be expected. She would drop any claim onit at once if it involved any
grave political injury, not becausethe State's refusal would make any
recourse to the secular armphysically impossible, but because she would
herself regard thisrecourse as surrounded by quite different moral
conditions and asconstituting a morally reprehensible act.

b. The Secular Arm Able to Act Under the Church Either as Principal Cause or
as Instrument

How are we to explain the mutual relations of Church and State inthe
case of a recourse to the secular arm?

Two schemas [637] can be proposed, as I have said. In the firstthe
State acts as instrument of the Church. It is the Church thattakes the
initiative and the responsibility. She makes use of theState for ends
which, being spiritual or supernatural, are higherthan those of the
State. And yet in this, the State, at any ratein the highest sense, will
find its own political advantage. Inthe performance of an act
intrinsically political—it is alwaysby way of its own proper act that
an instrument performs itsinstrumental act [638]—it procures spiritual
ends which hic etnunc will bring with them good temporal consequences.

Under the second schema the State acts as principal cause. Ittakes
all the initiative and responsibility for an interventionwhose end is an
immediately temporal good considered asconditioning a spiritual good, or
even, in the case of aconsecrational regime, as involving a spiritual
good.

Clearly enough the intervention of the secular arm will have adifferent
character according as it falls under one or the otherof these schemas.
In the first case it should tend to fall in withthe mode of action of
the spiritual power. In the second it willfollow no law but its own,
which is that of the temporal.

I believe that the calls the Church has actually made on thesecular
arm are to be explained in terms of one or other of thesetwo schemas. It
is for the historian to say which in each case,and it will not always be
an easy task. It becomes the less so bythe fact that in the Middle Ages
the Pope did not always act invirtue of his canonical power and as Vicar
of Christ, butsometimes in virtue of his extra-canonical powers, as
Prince ofthe Roman State or as Protector of Christendom. Let us say,
stillspeaking very generally, that the State always seeks a politicaladvantage. If it seeks it secondarily, as an accompaniment orconsequence
of a precise and previously willed spiritual good,then the State is
behaving as an instrument of the Church. If itseeks it primarily—even
though this political good remainssubordinate to the spiritual good
attached to it—then the Stateis acting as principal cause. For it is
open to the State, withoutany sin, to seek spiritual things—to
establish divine worshipfor example, as Cajetan remarks—on account of
the politicaladvantages they carry with them.[639]

c. St. Augustine's Two Attitudes on the Coercion of Heretics

The Church has the right to call on the secular arm. She can, andat
times she ought to, exercise this right in defence of goodmorals. Is
there ever anything to be gained by exercising it indefence of the
faith? Has resort to the political power for such apurpose ever been
opportune—has it ever been really useful tothe Church herself?

a. No one knew the value of liberty better than St. Augustine. Noone
was less inclined to introduce force into the domain ofintelligence and
love. At the outset of his book Contra EpistolamManichaei Quam Vocant
Fundamenti, which dates from 397, he writes:"Let those rage against
you who know not how hard a task it is toreach the truth, how difficult
to avoid error. Let them rageagainst you who know not how seldom and how
hardly our corporealfancies are pierced by the intelligence of a pious
spirit. Letthem rage against you who know not how difficult it is to
clearthe eye of the interior man that it may behold the true Sun. . .Let them rage against you who know not how many sighs andgroanings
go to how imperfect a knowledge of God. Let them,lastly, rage against
you who have never fallen into error likeyours. For my part I, who did
not come to contemplation of thepure truth cleared of fables save after
long tossing about in seasof bewilderment; who in my misery could barely
with God's helpshake off the vain fantasies of my mind mixed with a
throng offalse opinions; who yielded so late to the physician who called
meand drew me so sweetly to rid me of this darkness of my mind; whocried
out so long that the immutable and immaculate Substance ofwhom Holy
Scripture speaks, might deign to make Himself known tome; who sought out
curiously all those fictions that now hold youin the bonds of old
acquaintance and custom, listened to themattentively, believed them
imprudently, urged them at everyopportunity upon the belief of others,
defended them obstinatelyand passionately—I certainly have no wish to
rage against you,for I ought to bear with you as then I was borne with,
and to showas much patience with you as then my neighbour had with me,
when,infatuate and blind, I too erred in your doctrine. "That is
St.Augustine's first attitude. And undoubtedly it is the attitude towhich
we shall have finally to return, given that the medieval erais gone. In
that era the West made a supreme effort to banish fromher political and
cultural life those who held any form ofreligious error, driving back
the Jews into their ghettos, the newheretics into the darkness of
excommunication and death,[640] andthe pagans into the four continents.
But we are now entering on anera in which the disciples of truth and of
error are to beinextricably mingled together, like the wheat and the
tares, tillthe end of time, not indeed in the religious life, but in thepolitical and cultural life of every country on earth. I do notdoubt
that it was to prepare our hearts for a new effort,differing from the
medieval effort, that Pope Pius XI cited at theclose of his Encyclical
for the fifteenth centenary of the deathof St. Augustine,[641] the great
Doctor's moving declaration tothe Manichaeans.

b. And yet, on the testimony of Augustine himself, the secular armhas
been employed to good effect in defence of the faith. Hehimself had seen
it happen. In the letter he addressed about theyear 408 to Vincentius
the Donatist bishop, having recalled howthe Donatists themselves had
tried to call in the secular arm, headds: "You see now I hope that
the thing to be considered is notjust whether anybody is constrained,
but by what or in what causeit is that he is constrained, whether for
good or for evil. Notthat a man can become good in spite of himself; but
fear of whathe does not wish to suffer either makes him moderate the
obstinacyby which he is held, or induces him to inform himself about thetruth of which he is ignorant: it will either make him quit theerror
he cherishes, or seek the truth he does not know; and hecomes in the end
to will with a good heart what before he did notwill.[642] It would be
useless perhaps to say such things ifnumerous examples were not there to
attest them. We have seen notmerely certain men here and there, but
whole towns, once Donatist,now Catholic, detesting their late diabolical
schism and animatedwith an ardent love for unity; and they became
Catholic onoccasion of this very fear that so displeases you, and of the
lawsof the emperors. . . I have therefore yielded to these exampleslaid
before me by my colleagues. For my first feeling was againstconstraining
anybody [to return] to the unity of Christ, to actonly by words, to
fight by discussion, to conquer by reason, forfear of changing into
pretended Catholics those whom we knewbefore as open heretics.[643] It
was not contentious words thatovercame my opinion but indisputable
facts. They pointed, to startwith, to my own town, which having been
wholly of the party ofDonatus was converted to the unity of the Catholic
faith by fearof the imperial laws; and we see it so strongly detesting
itsformer views that one would think it had never fallen into them.So
it has been with many other towns whose names were mentioned tome that I
might see in them new verifications of the Scripture text: Give an occasion to a
wise man, and wisdom shall be added tohim [Prov. ix. 9]. For how many
there are—we have certain proofof it—that, struck by the evidence of
the truth would have longago become Catholic, and put it off from day to
day for fear ofthe violence of their own party ! How many remain
enslaved—notto the truth, for there never was any presumption that the
truthwas on your side—but to the heavy chains of inveterate custom,so that in them the divine word is fulfilled: A slave will not becorrected
by words: because he understandeth what thou sayest andwill not answer
[Prov. xxix. 19]. How many believed that the partyof Donatus was the
true Church, merely because the peace in whichthey lived had made them
sleepy, tired, idle in seeking out thetruth ! For how many were not the
doors of the Church closed bylying rumours that we placed I know not
what offerings on thealtar of God ! How many, thinking that the place
where a Christianwas could matter but little, remained in the sect of
Donatusbecause they had been born there,[644] and because nobody hadcompelled
them to leave it and pass to the Catholic Church. Thefear of these laws
by whose promulgation kings serve the Lord infear, has been thus
profitable to all."[645]

In the letter to Boniface mentioned above, written about 417, inwhich
ho summarises the same argument, St. Augustine adds: "Giveme a man
who, with right faith and true understanding, can saywith all the
energies of his heart: My soul thirsteth for God, forthe living God:
when shall I come and appear before God? For sucha one there is no need
of the terror of hell, to say nothing oftemporal punishments or imperial
laws, seeing that for him it isso great a good to cleave to God that he
not only dreads beingparted from that happiness but can scarcely even
bear delay in itsattainment. But yet before the good sons can cry out
that theyhave a desire to depart and to be with Christ, many, like badservants and good-for-nothing fugitives, must first be recalled totheir
Lord by the goad of temporal pains. For who can love us morethan Christ
who has laid down His life for His sheep? And yet,after calling Peter
and the other Apostles by word alone, when Hecame to summon Paul, who
was before called Saul, who would becomethe great builder of His Church
but was before her cruelpersecutor, He not only stopped him with a word
but dashed him toearth by His power; and to bring him to desire the
light of faithwho walked in the darkness of infidelity He struck him
first withblindness of the eyes. Without that punishment he would notafterwards have been healed; and unless he had had afflicted eyeswhen,
opening them, he saw nothing [Acts ix. 8], the Scripturewould not tell
us that there fell as it were scales from theseeyes at the touch of
Ananias' hands. What then becomes of theDonatist protestation: Is not
man at liberty to believe or not tobelieve? To whom did Christ do
violence? Whom did He constrain?Here before them stands the Apostle
Paul. Here let them recognizeChrist first compelling and afterwards
teaching, first strikingand afterwards consoling. For wonderful indeed
it is that he whoentered the service of the Gospel through corporal
constraint,afterwards laboured more in the Gospel than all they who werecalled by word of mouth; and he who was compelled by fear to lovedisplayed
that perfect love that casts out fear."[646]

Later on, in the Retractations (towards 426) the same doctrineappears.
St. Augustine there speaks of two books of his, now lost,written Contra
Partem Donati: "In the first of these books Iwrote that I was
displeased at those who wished to call in thesecular arm to force the
schismatics to return to communion. Andat that time, it is true that I
did not approve it at all. I hadthen no experience either of the
audacity in evil which broughtthem impunity, or of the beneficent change
which the observance ofdiscipline could produce."[647]

Elsewhere Augustine shows himself aware that these interventionsof
the secular arm "are subject to abuses, and detestable abuses,which
the good condemn and oppose to the best of their power [nodoubt he had
had occasion himself to react against them with allthe authority at his
command] but if it happens that the goodcannot prevent what they
condemn, it will be their duty to put upwith it for the sake of peace,
pro pace laudabiliter tolerant, nonea laudabilia, sed damnabilia
judicantes. . . He thinks of thecoercion of heretics by the secular arm;
he foresees the excessesit may occasion; he asks us to resign ourselves
to these pro pace,for the peace of the Church, because nothing can
justify schism,and because the good should not abandon unity whatever
the trialsthey may have to face."[648]

d. Conclusion

What is to be the theologian's final reply to the problem raisedby
recourse to the secular arm?

If recourse to the secular arm were, in itself, that is to sayalways
and everywhere, contrary to the true spirit of the Gospel,we should
evidently be unable to regard it as open to the Church.It would be
unjustifiable. At the most we might be able to pleadextenuating
circumstances. And, since we believe that the Churchherself is holy and
immaculate, we should have to throw theresponsibility for the numerous
occasions on which secular helphas been sought and obtained, not on her,
but on the spirit of violence characterizing certain historical epochs; on the
short-sightedness, weakness, error, passion—in a word, on thepersonal
failings of Pontiffs who so insufficiently or evenunworthily represented
her. For if the Church is without sin she is not without sinners, and even her
Pontiffs may be sinners. Issuch a position really called for, or even
tenable?

I think not. Undoubtedly there is much that an historian of theChurch
can put down to the false spirit of the times, to thepersonal or social
shortcomings of ministers of the Church; andmany regrettable episodes
may be thus explained. But I do notthink that resort to the secular arm
is always and everywhereincompatible with an enlightened zeal for the
Gospel and for the salvation of souls. And so there is nothing to prevent us
fromsometimes making the Church herself responsible; her purity andsanctity
will remain untouched. Moreover it is clear that theChurch assumes this
responsibility. We could deny the fact only byclaiming that a penal law
of quite general application, sanctionedby several Popes, long embodied
in the Corpus and invoked by theCouncil of Trent, was the work of the
spirit of the world, ofignorance, of human imprudence and passion. And
this no theologianwould concede.

But it will be important to make quite sure under which of the twoschemas
above mentioned recourse to the secular arm is had; forthe
responsibility of the Church is involved in a completelydifferent way
according as she herself makes use of the State asan instrument, or
asks, or even requires, the State to act asprincipal cause, on its own
initiative and in its own connaturalmanner.

Moreover, one fact is evident. In proportion as the temporal powerbecomes
more and more differentiated from the spiritual, inproportion as we pass
from a regime of the consecrational type, inwhich the temporal order is
exceptionally well adapted to serve asinstrument of the spiritual, to a
regime of the secular typebringing together citizens of all confessions
and beliefs, anyappeal to the secular arm, especially if it be asked to
functionas a pure instrument of the spiritual, becomes much less
frequent,more delicate, more hypothetical. But the essential power, theradical right of the Church, is not therefore modified. It isundeniable.
And one can imagine that in a secular Christendom of apluralist type the
Church might still exercise it under new forms,and in connection with
her own children alone.

2. The Death Penalty And The Medieval Repression Of Heresy

a. The State of the Question

Can the Church in certain circumstances—for if we want to stateher
doctrine, not travesty it, we must be precise, not generalizein the
abstract—can the Church, finding the death penaltyuniversally accepted
as just in a given cultural epoch, ask thesecular arm to employ it for
the repression of heresy, when this,besides its proper spiritual malice,
is universally held to be agrave danger for the social order—not only
because it is veryoften accompanied (as among the Cathari) with immoral
doctrinesand practices,[649] nor yet, be it added, simply because it is
aheresy; but rather because it is a heresy which affects Christiansliving
in a Christian society and social order, excluding all non-Christians?

Several Popes have done this. They called upon a temporal socialorder
composed solely of Christians to use the sternest sanctionin its power,
the death penalty, in order to save itself fromforces bent on its
destruction, forces that attacked it at once initself and in the
spiritual principle behind it, that is to saythe faith of the Gospel.
Did they, in so doing, betray the Gospel?

If the answer is yes, on what position would the theologian fallback?
He would say, as we said just now, that the Church beingholy and
unspotted, the responsibility for the betrayal could notlie on her, but
would have to fall wholly on her ministers. Thisposition would now be
still more readily defensible. The penallegislation of the Church,
meaning thereby not all the legislativemeasures of the Popes, but only
those that found their way intothe old Corpus, would be beyond reproach;
for if, in the Corpus,there are texts that require the heretic to be
turned over to thesecular arm, there are none that stipulate that he is
then to beput to death.[650]

But ought then the theologian to disavow, if not the penal code,the
general and constant legislation of the Church, at least thedecrees,
bulls, the more detailed measures, what might be calledthe jurisprudence
[651] of Pontiffs who, like Gregory IX orInnocent IV, in circumstances
which I have done my best to detail,have called for the use of the death
penalty against heresy, notprecisely as heresy, but as the medievo-Western
heresy, that is tosay, heresy directly incompatible with a political
constitutiondesigned for none but the faithful? (It is always to be
understoodthat the faith can inspire other political constitutions, in
whichCatholics would co-exist politically, not religiously, with
non-Catholics, and in which consequently the secular arm would nolonger
be needed by the Church in dealing with heresy. ) Hereagain I do not
think we are reduced to such an extremity.

b. Legitimacy of the Death Penalty in Certain Cases

To legitimize a call for the death penalty by the Church we shallneed
first to be assured that, in certain circumstances, the Statecan
properly employ it on its own account.

Let us briefly recall that when the Old Testament forbids killing(Exod.
xx. 13) the word "unjustly" is understood. For it goes onto
prescribe the death penalty again and again, for example inLeviticus (xx.
2, 9, 10, 27; xxiv. 16, 17). The New Testament didnot abolish the right
of the sword. St. Paul, speaking of thepolitical authority, writes:
"For he is God's minister to theefor good. But if thou do that
which is evil, fear; for he bearethnot the sword in vain. For he is
God's minister and avenger toexecute wrath upon him that doth evil"
(Rom. xiii. 4). In his DeCivitate Dei, St. Augustine thus comments on
these passages: "Thesame divine authority that says Thou shalt not
kill, sets upcertain exceptions to this prohibition. God then commands,
eitherby way of a general law or a special and temporary commission toan individual, that the punishment of death be applied. Now he isno
murderer who acts under authority, but a mere instrument likethe sword
with which he strikes. And those who by God's commandshave waged war, or
who, wielding the public power, and inconformity with the divine laws,
have put criminals to death,these have by no means violated the
commandment Thou shalt notkill."[652] Consequently, Innocent III
did no more than defend abiblical and traditional truth when he proposed
to the Vaudois whowished to re-enter the Church, a profession of faith
asserting,inter alia, that "the secular power can, without mortal
sin,exercise judgment of blood, provided that it punishes withjustice,
not out of hatred, with prudence, not precipitation."[653]

Drawing his inspiration from St. Augustine, St. Thomas, in a fewwords,
resolves the scriptural difficulties brought against thisdoctrine.

To the difficulty drawn from St. Matthew: "He who takes the swordshall
perish by the sword" (xxvi. 52), he replies that he whotakes the
sword is he who sheds blood without having eitherlegitimate power or
delegation from the same. But he who uses thesword by direct command of
God or of the legitimate authority,does not take the sword, he receives
it for the vindication ofjustice.[654] More generally, Christ reminds us
that the armsproper to the Kingdom of God are those that are
intrinsicallyspiritual and moral. Not that those intrinsically temporal
orphysical arms which it turns to account in a certain measure(making
what was alien its own), but which are specially theprerogative of the
kingdoms of this world, "are in themselvesevil and to be rejected.
When He says that he who draws the swordshall perish by the sword Christ
does not condemn the sword; Heannounces a universal law of temporal and
transitive action",[655] a law which moreover had long ago been promulgated
inGenesis: "Whoso shall shed the blood of man, his blood shall beshed" (ix. 6), and was to be repeated in the Apocalypse (xiii.10):
"He that shall kill by the sword must be killed by the sword."

To the difficulties drawn from the Sermon on the Mount: "But I sayto
you not to resist evil" (Matt. v. 39), and from the text ofSt.
Paul: "Revenge not yourselves my dearly beloved, but giveplace unto
wrath, for it is written: Revenge is mine, I willrepay, saith the
Lord" (Rom. xii. 19), St. Thomas replies thatsuch precepts should
always be borne in mind so that we may beready to obey them, and, if
necessary, to refrain from resistanceor self-defence. Nevertheless a man
must sometimes act otherwisefor the common good, or even for the good of
those against whom heis fighting.[656] In short, if these words of
Scripture wereaimed at the abolition of the death penalty and of the
coercivepower, St. Paul would not have written that the public
authoritiesdo not bear the sword in vain, "being God's ministers
and avengersto execute wrath upon him that doth evil" (Rom. xiii.
4).

The secular arm therefore can, on its own account and for its ownpurposes,
rightly inflict, on occasion, the punishment of death.

c. Whether the Church Could Demand it of the Medieval State Against Heresy

Yes, if the heresy directly endangered the fundamental politicalconstitution
of society, and if the punishment of death wasalready provided for the
worst crimes against the temporal good ofsociety. But in other cases,
no.

Let us examine these two conditions.

Consider the hypothesis of a civil society, a cultural world,whose
aim it was to bind together politically a religiouslydisparate
multitude, and in which the ruler, even were heCatholic, would represent
only the political union of thatmultitude. None can doubt that such a
union has become legitimateand necessary today. Since the days of the
medieval Church, afield in which wheat alone was sown, but enclosed in
the narrowlimits of the West, Providence has prepared a new era in whichtares are to be mixed with the wheat but the field is to cover allthe
earth.[657] On this hypothesis, it is clear that heresy, nolonger
anti-constitutional simply as heresy, cannot be justly madethe object of
a constitutional repression, either on theinitiative of the State or the
injunction of the Church. Thisapplies to any sort of repression
whatever, and with all the morereason therefore to repression by the
sword.

But, on the hypothesis of a society aiming, as the medievalsociety
did, at the political embodiment of the faithful alone, asociety
composed essentially, not merely accidentally, of none butmembers of the
Church, heresy would not only be antagonistic tothe Church, but of
necessity and whatever its kind, it would beopenly anti-constitutional,
and hence deserving of constitutionalrepression—a repression of which
the Church, if need be, mightremind the State as a duty. So that—and
this is the point to benoted—it could never become a duty for the
secular arm to belifted against heresy save only when this appeared to
beundermining the basic temporal order of society.[658]

If moreover—and here is the second condition—the deathpenalty is
provided for the highest crimes against the temporalgood of society, it
is clear that the secular arm could punish theheretic with death, and
that the Church, at need, could remind itof its duty; and more readily
on this point than on others, sincewhat heresy destroys is the faith,
the supreme political value ina consecrational regime. In fact, it was
not the Church, but thesecular arm itself—and under the most sceptical
of princes—which, in the Middle Ages, legally extended the death penalty tothe crime of heresy.[659] Finding this penalty received and inforce
the Popes did not declare it unjust. Did they thereby betraythe Gospel?
Yes, if the Gospel forbids the State ever to use thedeath penalty: and
then St. Paul himself would have betrayed it.Otherwise, no. For at this
period heresy appeared as one of thegravest of political disorders, and
if the legitimacy of puttingthe malefactor to death was to be contested,
that should have beendone in connection with such crimes as theft and
coining, and notin connection with heresy.

If we take due account of these two points—the basically
anti-constitutional character of medieval heresy, and the legitimacy ofthe
death penalty—we shall recognize the defensibility not onlyof the
ancient Corpus, but also, in all essentials, of the conductand
jurisprudence of the Popes themselves in encouraging thesecular arm to
deal with heresy by capital punishment. We say "inessentials"
because it will remain for the historian to appreciatein each individual
case, the manner in which the jurisprudence wasapplied, and the abuses
to which it lent itself.[660]

d. The Thirty-third Proposition of the Bull Exsurge Domine

A word now on the Thirty-third Lutheran proposition condemned onthe
15th June 1520, in the Bull Exsurge Domine: "The burning ofheretics
is against the will of the Spirit."[661]

In the eightieth conclusion of his Resolutiones Disputationum deIndulgentiarum
Virtute, addressed in 1518 to Leo X, Lutherprotests against the
interpretation which put two swords, onespiritual and the other
material, into the hands of the SovereignPontiff. For Luther, the two
swords are the Spirit and the Gospel.In our day, he adds, what we seem
to want "is not to destroyheresies and errors, but to burn the
heretics and the misled,following less the counsel of Scipio than that
of Cato who wantedto see Carthage destroyed. We even go against the will
of theSpirit, who wrote that the Jebusites and Canaanites were left inthe promised land so that the children of Israel could learn tomake
war and keep their warlike skill, by which are prefigured, ifSt. Jerome
does not mislead me, the wars of the heretics. In anycase, the Apostle
is to be believed when he says: there must needsbe heresies. But we say,
on the contrary, that the heretics mustbe burnt. As if we had to pluck
up the roots along with thefruits, the cockle along with the
corn."[662] These reflectionswere condensed into the condemned
proposition: "It is against thewill of the Spirit that heretics are
burnt."

It is to be noted first that Luther did not deny either that theSpirit
punishes the reprobate in the fires of hell, nor that thetrue heretics
are deserving of hell; so that in a sense (whichdoubtless is not in
question here) Luther's proposition might haveappeared false even in his
own eyes. It may be further remarkedthat having begun by saying that the
heretics should be overcomeby the Scriptures and not by fire, Luther
soon changes his mindand maintains (and with him the Protestant theology
of thesixteenth century) that if they resist Scripture, heretics—inthis case the Anabaptists—should be put to death, even when notseditious;
and the Saxon law provided the punishment of firepreceded by torture to
make them reveal their accomplices.[663]But let us come now to the heart
of our subject. Against Luther,who was maintaining that the heretics
could not, in those days, beput to death without defying the Holy
Spirit, Leo X affirmed theexistence of a right in those days to apply
the death penalty toheretics. Who had that right? Not the Church. It
belonged to theChristian State. The Church judged of heresy and called
on theState to perform its temporal duties.[664]

The theses mentioned in the Bull Exsurge were condemned by thePope
"as respectively heretical, or scandalous, or false, or aslikely to
shock pious ears and seduce simple minds."[665] Whatnote of
condemnation attached to the thesis that heretics couldnot be put to
death? Certainly a lesser note than heresy; like thethesis immediately
following: "To fight against the Turks is tofight against God who,
through them, punishes our iniquities"—athesis which also would
soon be violently disowned by its author.To call on the secular arm to
defend Christendom against itsenemies within and without, against the
heretics and against theTurks, then seemed to be a piece of prudence not
to be rashlydismissed.

e. Recourse to the Secular Arm in the Manner of the Church and the Manner of
the State: from St. Augustine to St. Thomas

Let us be still more precise. How are we to understand therespective
responsibilities of Church and State in applying thepunishment of death?

Did the Church take the immediate responsibility of theinitiative,
using the State as an instrument, a tool, for thedirect procurement of
her own good, and then secondarily of thatof the State? Or did the
Church content herself rather withinviting, even requiring [666] the
State to do its duty as amedieval Christian state—a state
constitutionally composed ofChristians—to act of itself, as a
principal cause, under itsown responsibility, to procure its own
temporal good directly, andthe spiritual and higher good of the Church
secondarily? In thefirst case it would have to be said that the
antisocial characterof all heresy in the Middle Ages was but a conditio
sine qua nonof its repression by the secular arm, the formal motive of
therepression being the directly anti-religious character of heresy.In
the second case it would have to be said that the anti-socialcharacter
of heresy was the formal motive of its repression by thesecular arm.

Thus, as has been said, recourse to the secular arm could beexplained
theoretically in more ways than one. It is not alwayseasy for the
historian to say which it was that prevailed. Theofficial and canonical
documents do not seem to suffice to settleit, for they often appear to
support opposite conclusions.[667]We must go the heart of the matter,
and note the kind of actiontaken against heresy.

If the repression is carried out in the manner of the Church,conformably,
that is, with the deeper exigencies of the Church, sothat the use made
of intrinsically temporal penalties isoverruled, moderated, and
transfigured by purely spiritualinfluences and raised to the height of
the spiritual, then theChurch is acting as principal cause and the State
is no more thanan instrument. But if the repression is carried out in
the mannerof the State, conformably with the exigencies of the State and
ofits harsher means, so that the legitimate use of temporalpenalties
(for we are considering legitimate use alone) isabandoned to the
gravitational pull of the temporal, then it isthe State that is acting
as principal cause, and the Church ismerely stimulating it. That seems
to be the rule. How is it to beapplied?

We may say that for St. Augustine, recourse to the secular arm wasconceived
in the manner of the Church. The State was no more thanthe instrument of
a cause directly religious and indirectlysecular. Its proceedings
therefore reflected the moderation andsanctity of those of the Church
herself. If Augustine calls forthe support of the secular arm, he tries
at the same time to bringits intervention under the laws of a higher
justice, more mercifulthan that which presides over purely temporal
causes. He is afraidthat the State does not always act with the needful
high-mindedness, sobriety and charity, that it does not sufficientlyenter
into the spirit of the Church, and may end by compromisingher. He wants
it to abstain from punishments involving mutilationand death, and to
fall in with the Church's horror of blood. Tothe tribune Marcellinus,
then sitting in judgment on the Donatistswho, having kidnapped two
Catholic priests, had killed the firstand mutilated the second by
putting out an eye and cutting off afinger, St. Augustine wrote about
412 that he was very anxious"lest perchance your excellency should
judge them worthy,according to the laws, of punishment not less severe
than theinjuries they had inflicted upon others. Wherefore I implore youby your faith in Christ, and by the mercy of Christ the LordHimself,
by no means to do this or permit it to be done. Foralthough we might
silently pass over the execution of criminalswho need not be regarded as
brought up for trial on any indictmentof ours, but by those to whose
vigilance the preservation of thepublic peace is entrusted, we do not
desire the sufferings of theservants of God to be avenged by the
infliction of preciselysimilar injuries by way of retaliation. Not that
we object topreventing these wicked men from committing further crimes;
but wedesire rather that justice be satisfied without taking their livesor maiming their bodies in any part, and that, by such coercivemeasures
as the laws prescribe, they may be turned from theirinsane frenzy to the
ways of peace, or compelled to give up theirviolence and betake
themselves to some useful labour. This isindeed called a penal sentence;
but who does not see that when aconstraint is put on the boldness of
savage violence, and theremedies fitted to produce repentance are not
withheld, thisdiscipline should be called a benefit rather than a
vindictivepunishment?"[668] In the Contra Cresconium (about 406),
St.Augustine had even declared that "it does not please good peoplein the Catholic Church when an evil man, even a heretic, is put todeath".[669]
But how are these texts, especially the last, to beunderstood? Does
Augustine set himself absolutely against thedeath sentence? No, since
towards 413 he recognized its lawfulnessin a text of the De Civitate Dei
cited above. Does he wish to denythe Church the right to authorise the
use of the sword in anycircumstances? He does not say so, and we cannot
attribute theview to him. He desires simply that the sword should not be
usedwhen some other punishment will suffice; and he does not considerthat its use against heresy is just or suitable for times likehis,
when the Christian world is not yet politically organized. Hetries to
spiritualize the action of the State as far as may bebefore putting it
at the service of the Church, even to absorb itin a way into that of the
Church. Above all, if the State ismerely the mandatory of the Church he
would not have it defend herby the sword. For then indeed the maxim is
valid: "Illud ab eofit, cujus auctoritate fit."

Things were different in the Middle Ages. It was no longer a caseof a
government's favouring Christianity, but ruling over a mixedbody of
Christians and pagans. Western society is now altogetherChristian. It is
Christian in constitution. Heresy, more than everbefore, has become a
political crime. The medieval State is forcedto protect itself against
it, for it endangers the very principleof its existence. If it is not to
perish it must mobilise themeans of defence at its disposal; and these
means are harsh.Politically, and therefore morally, it may justly defend
itself;and it is even its duty to do so. And the Church, which then to agreat extent depended on the State for the conditions of herbiological
existence, could at need recall it to its duty.

The repression of heresy in those days was effected in the mannerof
the State, to safeguard the good of the State in the firstplace, and
that of the Church, so much more precious in herself,in the second. The
responsibility therefore fell directly on theState and not on the
Church. The Church was responsible forrecognizing and approving a
political structure incorporating nonebut Christians (Jews and pagans
being held at arm's length), andone therefore in which heresy, should it
unexpectedly crop up,would seem a crime against the State; but we cannot
say that theChurch, at any given moment of her historical existence,
shouldfrom the first have refused to recognize as legitimate a societycomposed of none but the faithful. There was nothing sinful insuch
an experiment. Again, the Church was responsible for havingrecognized
the legitimacy of the death penalty for crimes againstthe State; but
here too the Church acted rightly. In this sense,then, the Church was
responsible for the death of heretics; butevidently only by way of an
after-effect and essentiallyindirectly. She cannot justly be saddled
with the realresponsibility. In virtue of the political and historicalconditions of the Middle Ages it lies squarely on the secularpower.
It was for the latter to punish heresy as a crime againstthe State when
the Church had punished it as a religious offenceby excommunication. And
things were such that at the beginning,when the secular power attempted
to shirk its duty, as happenedmore than once, it failed in one of its
principal tasks, that ofsafeguarding the common good and the public
safety. I say "at thebeginning", and for as long as the states
were constitutionallycomposed of the faithful alone; for later on, when
theirpopulations became of necessity mixed, the moral obligation tocivil
repression of heresy automatically lapsed.

Thus then, in St. Thomas, day, the State acted, or at least washeld
to act, on its own account in dealing with heresy. Certainprecautions
taken by the canonists whereby, on handing over thedelinquent, they
invited the secular courts to stop short of effusion of blood and the death
penalty, might lead us to thinkthat the ecclesiastical power considered
itself still as primarilyand principally responsible for the treatment
inflicted on theheretics.[670] But these are formulas of an age that had
longpassed away. By the time of Gregory IX, and much earlier no doubt,the effective responsibility for the punishment of heresy hadpassed
to the secular powers, and the expression brachio saecularirelinquere is
not in the least to be taken as a legal fiction,still less an hypocrisy,
but meant just what it said. That is theopinion of many theologians
today.[671] I think it was that ofSt. Thomas himself; there is nothing
in his writings to oblige usto rank him among those who threw the
juridical responsibility forthe death penalty on the Church.[672]

To sum up: when punishments are moderate and still keep somethingof
the air of paternal correction, that is a sign that the Churchherself is
taking the responsibility for the chastisement ofheresy and is treating
the State as a mandatory. But when thesanctions become heavier and more
terrible, that is a sign thatthe State, under no matter what legal
formula, is now theprincipal partner in the business of repression and
has undertakento conduct it in its own way. It is significant that it
was theEmperor Frederick II who legalised the use of the death penaltyand of the stake against the heretics.

Even if one had to grant with Suarez (which I do not) that theChurch
was the principal agent in the application of the deathpenalty, it would
remain clear after all that has been said, thatshe was prompted only by
the peculiar political situation in theMiddle Ages—a situation which,
on Suarez, supposition, playedthe part, not as I believe of "formal
motive" but at least ofcondition sine qua non for the intervention
of the Church. Butthen the Church, as we must recognize, would have
undertaken veryheavy repressive proceedings. Too heavy, in my opinion at
least,to leave her holiness untarnished. Moreover the State, thenfunctioning
only as an instrument, could have taken none of thisresponsibility upon
itself. We should then have had to attributeit, not to the sins of the
Church, but to the sins of herrepresentatives, the sins of the
hierarchy. The Church in theperson of her Popes, says Vacandard
somewhere; the expression isjust, but could be taken equivocally. For,
in those of theirproceedings which would be blameworthy in God's eyes,
ormanifestly tainted with error or injustice,[673] the Popes do notrepresent
Christ; they are not the Church. However, fortunately wehave no need to
fall back on this extreme solution.

Here it may be remarked that the attitude of the Pope and thebishops
seems to be different in the case of a judicialcondemnation to death for
heresy, and in the case of the holy war,of the Crusade against the
heretics or the Mussulmans. In thefirst case the ecclesiastical
tribunals handed over the delinquentto the secular arm. In the second we
shall see the Pope or hislegate positively directing the operations of
the Crusade. That iswhy we attribute the responsibility for the judicial
punishment ofheretics to the secular power. This solution will not serve
forthe Crusades. There the responsibility rests on the legate andfinally
on the Pope—considered, it is true, not as head of theChurch but as
protector of Christendom. If the facts demanded it,there would be no
objection from a theological standpoint to theadoption of this last
solution to explain the judicial punishmentof heresy: the secular power
would then be an instrument in thehands of the Pope, as Suarez would
have it—but of the Popeconsidered as protector of Christendom and not
as Vicar of Christ.My chief preoccupation here once more is not to
detail the factsas an historian would do, but to bring out the
theologicalexplanation they require when looked at in the light of thesubsequent evolution of theological doctrine.

f. The Relation of the Pagan Empire to Christianity Unlike that of Medieval
Christendom to Heresy

If it be now objected that Christianity had formerly overthrownpagan
society, just as heresy overturned the Christian society,and that in
consequence, according to our principles, the paganState had the right
to persecute the Christians, the reply will bethat from the standpoint
of a pure political empiricism the twosituations did in fact present
similar characteristics, and thatonce the legitimacy of a State
essentially and constitutionallypagan is admitted, it must indeed be
granted the right to punishChristians as guilty of the crime of lese-majeste:
[674] not allthe persecutors were wholly possessed by the spirit of
hatred, andmany, no doubt, resembled that proconsul who warned Cyprian
tohave a care for his life, and to whom the saint serenely replied:"Do
what you have to do."

But the error would consist precisely in this empiricism. We musttread
warily: the debate is not solely, or even directly,religious. It does
not consist in asking whether medieval heresyhad the same rights against
Christianity as Christianity hadagainst the old paganism: the answer is
clear, but leaves intactthe question whether we are to form the same
estimate of the deathpenalty as used against the first Christians and as
used againstthe first heretics. This question is directly political andindirectly religious: it consists precisely in asking whether thepagan
Empire could as legitimately defend itself against theChristians as the
medieval regime could against the heretics: wemust take pains to
discover, said St. Augustine, in a text alreadymentioned, not whether
anybody is constrained, but in what causehe is constrained, whether in
that of good or of evil, of justiceor injustice.

This raises the whole question of the legitimacy of the paganEmpire.
My answer is that this Empire was politically legitimateto the extent to
which it assured, doubtless with numberlessdeficiencies, a certain
common good, a certain authentic politicalorder. In this sense St. Paul
could write to the Romans themselvesthat "authority comes from God
only, and all authorities thathold sway are of his ordinance. Thus the
man who opposes authorityis a rebel against the ordinance of God",
that "the magistrateis God's minister, working for thy good",
and that we must besubject "not only for fear of punishment, but in
conscience" (xiii. 1-7). Now, the first Christians had no intention ofoverturning
this authentic political order; they tried, on thecontrary, to respect
it, as the first apologists remarked, andthey safeguarded it as far as
they could when their numericalgrowth entailed the foundation of a new
political regime. But thepagan Empire was politically illegitimate to
the extent to whichit protected paganism against Christianity, and
politically andconstitutionally conditioned the existence of one of the
worstreligious aberrations, one moreover in which the rulers did notthemselves
believe. In this sense St. John compared it to theBeast issuing from the
sea, blaspheming against God, warring withthe saints and having power
over the whole earth (Apoc. xiii. 1-8). Thus, from the standpoint of a political
science that wouldtranscend empiricism, of a large and integral
politics, thepersecuting edicts appear unjust and the conduct of the
Emperorsmonstrous. That cannot be said of medieval society. Itsconstitution
politically conditioned the existence of Christianityand not of a
religious aberration. Heresy, in overturning it, hadneither the
intention nor the power to replace it by any otherChristian political
constitution. If, in ruining medievalChristendom, it prepared a future
Christendom, the Christendom oftomorrow, it was not in any direct and
constructive manner, butindirectly and blindly. It appeared,
politically, as the oppositeof a legitimate movement. The State could
take severe measuresagainst it without injustice.

3. Torture And Cruelty In The Middle Ages

Let us sum up what has been said on the medieval repression ofheresy.
First, the laws of the Corpus Juris, which nowhere mentionthe death
penalty and provide for abandonment to the secular armonly for other
punishments, such as confiscation of goods andimprisonment, do not seem
unreasonable. The jurisprudence of thosePopes who, from Gregory IX
onward, approve the secular power forits spontaneous introduction of the
death penalty for heretics,and go so far as to recall it to its
self-imposed duty, seems tome also justifiable, so long at least as this
jurisprudence hasthe character of an authentic measure of public safety,
andprovided one observes the first rule of sound history and putsevents
into their historical context. But what then are we to sayof the
jurisprudence of these same Popes when it sanctions the usemade by the
civil tribunals of the barbarisms of the stake and thetorture chamber?
Are we obliged to justify it? Here the questionbecomes more complex.

a. The Middle Ages and Modern Times

Without wishing to pass a comprehensive judgment on the morals ofthe
Middle Ages in order to compare them with those of othertimes, we have,
to start with, to note a fact. Alongsidecharacteristics whose nobility
and delicacy win all admiration,the Middle Ages present us—e. g., in
penal customs and methodsof suppressing disorder—with brutalities,
cruelties andbarbarisms which revolt our sensibilities and provoke ourindignation.[675] And we are right to be scandalized; but thatdoes
not mean that our modern conscience is necessarily, on thewhole, and in
the sight of the angels, more generous, morespiritual, more holy, more
heroic, than the medieval conscience—in a word, that it is better intensively;
it means that,Christianity having quietly continued its work, a certain
culturalprogress has been achieved,[676] so that the modern conscience
ismore alive to certain of its duties, and has become betterextensively,
at any rate in SO far as it has not lost groundelsewhere. However that
may be, this spirit of violence, the dregsof a barbarism which
Christianity has not yet fully dissolved, Theupsurge too of a barbarity
that Christianity had repressed,overshadowed one whole side of medieval
history, and ended bysurrounding the most legitimate institutions and
enterprises withan atmosphere of horror. For our modern imagination it
is allconcentrated in a single word: the Inquisition.

b. Condemnation of Torture by Nicholas I: Its Revival

Whence arose the use of torture in the tribunals of the MiddleAges?
It "had left too many sorrowful memories in the minds ofthe
Christians of the first centuries for them to dream ofemploying it in
their own tribunals. With the exception of theVisigoths, The barbarians
who founded The states of Europe knewnothing of this brutal method of
judicial enquiry. At the most,they availed themselves of whipping which
according to St.Augustine, had a paternal and familial
character."[677] In 866,in his Responsa ad Consulta Bulgarorum,
Pope Nicholas I seized theopportunity offered him formally to condemn
the use of torture,even in the civil tribunals. He declared it to be
contrary todivine and human law.[678] We see in which direction theinfluence
of the Church was brought to bear at the outset.

The pagan spirit however made war on her. It was not deadeverywhere.
It struggled up once more to the light, penetratinginto custom; it
invaded secular, and even spiritual institutions.It was thus that the
ordeal, accredited among the Germans, foundits way gradually into the
civil tribunals, and even into many ofthe local ecclesiastical
tribunals.[679] The punishment ofburning, also in favour in German
lands, was first inflicted onthe heretics at the hands of excited crowds
before it waslegalised by Frederick II;[680] and when the Popes approved
themeasures taken by this Emperor against heresy, what they foundthemselves
approving in practice was death at the stake. Torturehad been condemned
by the Church, but under the influence of thelegists and the old Roman
law it invaded the civil tribunals atthe very moment when the Popes had
got the upper hand of theordeals. It was inflicted first on thieves and
then on brigands.Then, with Innocent IV, the Popes ended by ratifying
its use bythe secular arm against the heretics.[681]

More generally speaking, it is the barbarity of all the penalcodes
and customs of the epoch that sickens us. The state ofthings may perhaps
be well enough summed up by saying that thejudicial machinery in its
entirety, though it was on the wholemore useful than harmful, was
nevertheless vitiated first of allin the civil tribunals, and then
eventually in the ecclesiasticaltribunals by practices too cruel not to
be unjust, inhuman, andtruly lamentable.

c. Judgment on the Use of Torture

Is our judgment on torture to be similar to that on the punishmentof
death? Clearly not, if the punishment of death is legitimateand if we
hold, with Pope Nicholas I, that torture cannot bejustified under any
law human or divine.

How then should the Church historian estimate the conduct of thosePopes
who approved the action of the secular power in usingtorture to force
heretics to denounce their accomplices? Twojudgments are possible.

An attentive study of the period will do one of two things. Eitherit
will reveal that the employment of torture by the civiltribunals
(whether inflicted on ordinary criminals or on hereticsis all one, since
heresy was considered in the Middle Ages as acrime against the State)
had penetrated so deeply into customaryprocedure, had become so
"natural", that it was practicallyimpossible to call on the
secular arm yet pretend to forbid itsuse. A true prudence (not that of
the flesh) might then counsel aprovisional tolerance of torture as of a
lesser evil (as slaveryhad once been tolerated, as God Himself had
tolerated polygamy inthe Old Law), so as to leave the way clear for
other and moreurgent tasks; but without abandoning hope of a better
regime inwhich to work effectually for its extirpation from judicialcustoms
and penal codes. In that case the historian will certainlycondemn
torture, but he will not condemn the Popes who attemptedto put the
secular judicial and penal machine into action againstthe heretics
before they could hope to make it less barbarous."Every prudent man
tolerates a lesser evil for fear of preventinga greater good."[682]

Alternatively an attentive study of the facts will reveal thattorture,
instead of being tolerated as an inevitable evil, wasapproved and
maintained at an epoch when it could, and thereforeought to have been,
abolished. In this case the historian will bebound to condemn those who
maintained it and to denounce aconcession made to the powers of evil for
which they alone shouldbear the responsibility before history, before
the Church, andbefore God, who themselves acted violently and inhumanly,
whosinned by weakness and lacked the energy to combat the spirit ofcruelty
around them, or perhaps simply lacked the perspicacity. todiscern the
needs of their time and the immediate tasks to whichthey should have
turned their hands.

Thus then the strictest theology of the Church leaves thehistorian a
complete liberty of judgment in this matter.[683] Itwill ask him simply
not to attribute to the Church, but rather toour human misery,
everything clearly erroneous and reprehensibleuncovered by his
researches.

C. Summary

It is impossible to speak of the coercive power of the Church, tocall
up the history of its exercise, without a sense ofdepression. It could
scarcely be otherwise. In raising thisproblem we have brought ourselves
face to face with a form of evilthat cannot but prove disturbing and
oppressive even when it seemsjust and necessary—the evil of
punishment, malum poenae. Wecannot help feeling it. But if we see the
malum poenae as a stainon the holiness of the Church, then we must see
the holiness ofGod as stained with it too.

1. Coercion In Hell

One cannot read without a shudder the tremendous condemnations ofthe
Gospel passed on those who, on the last day, shall be throwninto the
furnace of fire and devoted to eternal torment. But theevil lies not in
God, but in the perversity of wills in revolt; onthe one hand against
the infinite and eternal holiness of GodHimself, and on the other
against the finite holiness of the orderof the universe. The supreme
punishments, therefore, cast noshadow on the divine holiness; this we
know by divine faith. Andyet this certitude cannot quieten our hearts in
this world. Onlyin the direct vision of the divine essence will the
problem of thefinal obduracy of the damned, and the correlative problem
ofeternal punishment, become intrinsically clear in the sight of menand
of angels.

2. Spiritual Coercion In Time

Making all due allowances and modifications we may recognize ananalogous
mystery in ecclesiastical penalties. Here again we standin the presence
of a divine order, an order of love which, becauseit is never to
disappear, tends to overcome and repress alladverse influences. The
jurisdictional power founded by Christ hasfor its first mission the
announcing of the good news of theGospel (declaratory power), and for
its secondary mission theeffectual organizing of the conduct of those
who welcome this goodnews (canonical power). And the Kingdom of God in
its wholeness,that is to say the divine order resulting from the descent
of theHoly Trinity into history and from Its habitation among men,cannot,
in virtue of a divine intention expressly signified in theGospel, find
its final perfection, its perfect realization, saveby the integral
functioning of the jurisidictional power,involving first a genuinely
legislative power (whose essential andgeneral decisions are ratified in
heaven), and in consequence ajudicial and coercive power. When therefore
those who have giventheir hearts to the Church begin to revolt against
her laws, sheis entitled to act against them and inflict penalties.

These penalties, always spiritual if you look to the power thatdecrees
them and the end that justifies them, will be, in theirimmediate and
intrinsic tenor, either directly spiritual—asexcommunication,
expressly provided for in Scripture—or elsetemporal, material. To deny
this last point—to deny that theChurch can decree, subject of course
to the demands of prudenceaccording to time, place and circumstance,
penalties that touchher subjects in the goods of fortune, in the goods
of the body, inthe use of liberty—would be to deny her power—alwaysexercised of course, for spiritual ends—over the whole man; itwould
be to deny her all power to descend into the realities ofpractical life,
thereby limiting not only her coercive power buteven her judicial and
legislative power; lastly, it would begravely to misconceive her
spiritual nature, for while thiscertainly forbids her to use temporal
things in the manner of, andfor the ends of, the State, it does not
forbid but rather requiresher to make use of them according to her own
spiritual laws andfor her own spiritual ends.

There are here two errors to be avoided: that which denies theChurch's
right to dispose of temporal things, contesting hercharacter as a
perfect and autonomous society, a kingdomeffectively organized to exist
in this world; and that whichgrants her the power of disposing of
temporal things in the mannerof and for the ends of the State; making
her a kingdom of thisworld. If the jurisdictional power is divine,
assisted—in ameasure which I shall try to determine further on—even
in itslegislative, judiciary and coercive exercise, here, as before, weare in the presence of the most mysterious form of the malumpoenae,
since by man's revolt the things that should bring himhighest
deliverance bring him only oppression from without andaffliction from
within.

The exercise of the coercive power, moreover, even when just,prudent
and generally irreproachable, even when confined tointrinsically
spiritual penalties such as excommunication, runsthe risk of irritating
instead of amending the delinquent, and maythus occasion, indirectly,
and on account of his own lack ofvirtue, an aggravation of the malum
culpae, the evil of guilt.Finally, while every judgment immediately
pronounced by God isinfallible, it is certain that the exercise of the
coercive poweris divinely guaranteed only in a general way, for the
generaltendency of its decisions, but not for each particular case; sothat these, through judicial error or the influence of passion,may
sometimes be unjust. And the possibility of the leastinjustice in
spiritual matters is a thing too terrible tocontemplate, although we
know perfectly well that properlyspeaking it is not the Church that is
to be blamed, but theignorance or sin of her ministers.

The penalties which the Church inflicts with her own hands, are,when
considered intrinsically, spiritual and temporal. Amongintrinsically
spiritual or moral penalties we find, for example,deprivation of the
sacraments, of the sacramentals, ofecclesiastical suffrages, of
ecclesiastical burial, degradation,and so on. The intrinsically temporal
or physical penalties aremore variable. The Code actually mentions
punishments touchingexternal goods—fines [684], deprivation of
pensions [685], ofbenefices [686], obligation to almsgiving [687];
touching bodilygoods—fasts, pilgrimages [688]; and touching freedom—obligation
or interdiction of residence in a given place [689],obligation to make a
retreat in a monastery [690], surveillance[691]. The older usage of the
Church provided for heavierpenalties: imprisonment, beating (e. g., in
the Rule of St.Benedict). It is to be noted on the one hand that theintrinsically
temporal and physical punishments inflicted by theChurch herself,
appeared only in a rudimentary state to beginwith, when the canonical
powers had not had time to develop; andthat, on the other, these same
penalties became milder with thedevelopment of the spirit of humanity,
which is among the fineflowers of Christian charity as manifest on the
plane of humanculture. The sacramental penances themselves were formerly
muchheavier. As I have pointed out, the present Code, withoutforgetting
the grave recommendations of the Gospel (Matt. xviii.17), of St. Paul (1
Cor. v. 2), and of St. John (2 John. 10—11), is nevertheless careful to
respect the human ties that mayunite the faithful with one
excommunicated, even vitandus.

3. Recourse To The Secular Arm

Below the Kingdom of Heaven there are the kingdoms of this world;below
the Church whose immediate ends are spiritual, there is asocial order
whose immediate ends are temporal. The Church isfounded on grace; she
confers those gifts that make us fellowcitizens with the saints, members
of Christ, the domestics of God;the social order is founded on nature,
and confers the goods ofcivilization and culture. An abyss separates
these two planes. Theconcepts of order, society, organism, happiness,
justice,legislative, judiciary and coercive power, are applicable to
both;not, however, in an identical sense, but analogically, in a senseessentially different though proportionally similar. Even when thetemporal
order opens itself, as it should, to the influence ofChristianity, and
tends to become a Christian temporal order, itsown plane will never be
that of Christianity, and its means ofcoercion will never be those of
Christianity.

How are we to explain the attitude of the Church when, incircumstances
which need careful definition she has decided tocall on the secular arm,
on temporal powers of coercion? Such anattitude could take two forms.

The intention of the Church in the first case would be to extendthe
field, in itself very narrow, of the temporal or physicalpunishments at
her disposal. She would ask the State to lend her,to place in her hands
for the time being, some of its own numerousmeans of physical coercion;
so that she could turn them first todirectly spiritual ends (the formal
motive of the intervention),while the State, for its part, would reap
its own temporaladvantage (the absolute condition of the intervention).
Supposefor example that the Church invokes the secular arm to put a stopto scandals and punish delinquencies proscribed by the divine law,but
tolerated by the less exigent civil law. Then the secular armwould be
functioning as an instrument of the Church. Theresponsibility for the
consequences would fall on the Church(though, strictly speaking, no
stain could ever affect her). Butthe Church would have tried at the same
time to overrule theState's coercive action, to set her own limits to
it, toassimilate it to the spirituality of her own law. She wouldrequire
moderation; she would forbid recourse to the death penaltyand to
bloodshed. If she called on the secular arm to chastisecrimes
particularly baneful and scandalous in a society composedexclusively of
Christians, in which the average level ofcollective morality could be
placed sufficiently high, theholiness of the Church would then be shown
in her care tospiritualize the temporal penalties she borrowed from the
State, acare that clearly appears for example in St. Augustine'srecommendations
to the tribune Marcellinus. An historian whowishes to deal with these
appeals to the secular arm that went toaugment the number of
ecclesiastical penalties, ought todistinguish three great periods: in
the first, the State was notyet Christian and there could be no question
of the Churchborrowing its means of coercion; in the second, medieval
period,the State, conceived as exclusively composed of Christians,
could,without losing sight of its temporal vocation, lend the Churchcertain
means of coercion which, for her part, she found it goodhic et nunc to
borrow for the better fulfilment of her spiritualmission; in the third,
the State, even Christian, even Catholic,but no longer conceivable as
composed essentially and exclusivelyof children of the Church, cannot,
by its own constitution, putits coercive power at the disposal of the
Church.[692]

In the second case the Church's intention would be to remind theState
of the obligations of her temporal mission and of her dutyto watch over
the public safety (the formal motive and direct endof the intervention),
whose ruin, in the given circumstances ofplace and time, would imperil
the salvation of many souls (thesafeguarding of which would be the
remote end of theintervention). We have already seen the principles
involved inthis sort of intervention (supra, pp. 250 and 274).

4. The Way Of The Church And The Way Of The State

The historian will often have difficulty in recognizing the natureof
the Church's interventions. Is she borrowing means of coercionfrom the
State? Is she simply recalling the State to its duty indefence of a
gravely menaced temporal common good? The difficultyof deciding will be
so much the greater inasmuch as these twokinds of intervention seem at
times to be mixed up. Certain greatenterprises began in one manner and
ended in the other, the deadweight of matter making them slip insensibly
from the spiritualstyle proper to the Church to the temporal style
proper to theState. It was thus that the medieval Inquisitors continued
to makeuse of a formula of condemnation in which the secular arm was
"efficaciously" recommended to avoid spilling blood and inflictingthe
punishment of death, when everything, including the veryinefficacy of
this recommendation, showed that at this period therepression of heresy
had become a directly temporal affair. It wasthus that at the time of
the Crusades, certain pilgrimages, begunin the spiritual mode, ended up
in the temporal.

If we confuse these two types of intervention on the part of theChurch,
and see their distinction as just another piece ofintellectual by-play
or a worthless subtlety, we shall fall intomisconceptions impossible to
remedy. We may then be led to saddlethe Church with the responsibility
for enterprises required byher, certainly, but to be conducted under the
responsibility ofthe State and in the temporal manner of the State. We
shall tendto forget the gulf that separates a Christian temporal order,however perfect, from a Christian spiritual order; the ChristianStates
from Christianity; the ways of the kingdoms of this worldfrom those of
the Kingdom of Heaven. And then they will be rightwho, considering the
medieval repression of heresy, reproach theChurch for having stained her
native purity, and having replacedevangelical means by political means,
with having confused theKingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of this
world.

But however much intermingled in practice these two modes ofintervention
may be, they cannot be identified by the theologian.One of them may
merge insensibly into the other as time goes on,and may often disguise
itself under the same juridical formulasand within the same continuous
web of history; we may hesitate tofix the precise point at which one
replaces the other; each keepsits own character nevertheless, and is not
to be reduced to theother. And it is this character that decides what
has to beattributed to the Church or to the State, to God or to Caesar,
inall the tangled complexities and variations of these appeals tothe
secular arm.

5. The Two Regimes, Consecrational And Secular

The political conditions required to justify the Church in callingon
the secular arm for the repression of heresy suppose theexistence of a
temporal community essentially composed ofChristian citizens alone. That
is the first form of ChristianState ever effectively contemplated. It
was not destined to lastfor ever.

The state of things has changed. The Church, which is divine, hasretained
her unity. But her children are no longer temporallygathered up into one
country, or indeed into one culture. Withineach country, within each
culture, they find themselves closelyunited for the needs of temporal
life with men of other religions,men who do not belong to the Church,
not visibly at any rate. Tomake up for it, their numbers have grown and
they are spread overthe whole earth. Heresy therefore has ceased to be,
as such, acrime against the security, the very existence, of the State.
Thepolitical conditions of the Middle Ages have passed away, andalong
with them the legitimacy of any recourse to the secular armfor the
repression of heresy.

Between those times when recourse to the secular arm seemed to benecessary
and legitimate, and those in which it had clearly ceasedto be so, there
was a lengthy period in which its legitimacy andusefulness might seem
less evident, even disputable; sometimes andin some places it seemed to
be opportune and in others not. Undersuch circumstances the question of
how the canonical power is tobehave, of the attitude it is to adopt,
becomes a question ofjurisprudence. If the assistance of the Holy Spirit
extends tothis domain it does so only in a very general manner. Errors
andfaults are not hard to find; and if one may judge the past in thelight
of the present one may think that it would have been betterperhaps to
come to an earlier resolution to limit the use ofcoercive means,
especially intrinsically temporal means, and tohave given all the
preference to those of charity and persuasion.

"Men like Gandhi have given an example of what a technique of
non-violence, inspired by an advanced spirituality, can achieve evenon
the temporal plane. It is for us Christians to revive a trulyauthentic
part of our heritage and learn how at once to protectthe holiness of the
Church and save the souls of our separatedbrethren, in an attitude
toward them which is at once firm andcharitable.[693]

6. Torture

It is certain, as Pope Nicholas I taught, that torture is contraryto
the laws of God and man. It is certain on the other hand thatlater on it
found entrance into medieval practice under thecombined influence of
paganism and the old Roman law. How then arewe to judge the conduct of a
Pope like Innocent IV who, finding itin use against thieves and
brigands, notified the civil tribunalsthat they ought to apply it
against heretics because they werepolitically more dangerous?

There can be no question of justifying the use of torture. Nor isit
sufficient to note that it was no sad monopoly of the MiddleAges, and
that modern coercive institutions, under the influenceof the
sadistically inclined, have invented new forms of torture,often more
subtle but certainly no less repulsive. All that can besaid is that
either torture had then become so common that itwould have been
practically impossible to forbid it to seculartribunals in the very act
of asking their aid, and that it wastherefore tolerated as a lesser
evil; or that it could then, andconsequently ought then, to have been
abolished. In this case theresponsibility for its use does not stop
short at the State; itextends to the churchmen who failed in their
mission and betrayedthe ideal of the Church. It cannot in any case be
laid on theChurch herself. The errors of the canonical power in purelyparticular decisions, due to the deficiencies of its ministers, donot
touch her inner sanctity.

7. What The Church Approves As Righteousness In The State Able To Be
Defilement For Herself

The Church has a doctrine on the coercive power applicable toherself
as a Kingdom living in this world, though not of thisworld. This
doctrine is righteous. She has another doctrine on thecoercive power
applicable to the kingdoms of this world. Thisdoctrine too is righteous,
but with another kind of righteousness.

What is duly proportioned to the Christian State may not beproportioned
to Christianity itself and to the Church; what ispure for temporal
society is not necessarily so for the spiritualsociety, and the
righteousness of the kingdoms of this world mightbe a stain on the
Kingdom of Heaven. "You, who are anecclesiastical ruler" said
Cardinal Cajetan, "be careful first torule conformably with the
divine laws. . . You cannot, for thesake of the Church entrusted to you,
be satisfied with this merelyexternal order that leaves a secular ruler
content. . . The Brideshould be able to hear these words: Thou art fair,
O beloved!"[694] We shall fall into grave error if we forget these things.

The coercive power of the Church is assisted in a general way andin
respect of its exercise as a whole. It is not infallible ineach
particular case. Ignorance, error, sloth, cowardice, passionand
injustice will all play a part there. For there are sinners inthe Church
and in the hierarchy, although in the Church there isno sin. The
coercive power of the State, even the Christian State,is subject to even
more defects. And what State, what temporalorder, has ever been fully
Christian?

If we bear these principles in mind we can look squarely at theproblem
of the Church's coercive power: we can welcome all thefacts unearthed by
the historians, and we shall have no fear ofseeing the Church's holiness
effaced. She shines in the midst ofevil like the sun in a mist.

3 The Holy War And The Crusade

The origins of the Crusades are usually sought in the Christianpilgrimages
to the Holy Places, pilgrimages which, on account ofthe hostility of the
Mussulmans, were transformed into organizedmilitary expeditions. But,
says Carl Erdmann, if you want to go tothe root of the matter and
understand the formation of the idea ofthe Crusade,[695] attention
should first be fixed on the effortmade by the medieval Church to
moralise the use of arms, and turnthem to ends she could approve of.
Under the pontificate of UrbanII, one of those ends was the conquest of
the Holy Places, towhich the Pope attached the same indulgences as to
the pilgrimageto Jerusalem, so that it thereby acquired the value of apilgrimage, cum armis Iherusalem peregrinati sunt.[696] The ideaof
the Crusade is to be explained above all by the generalattitude of the
medieval Church to war; it crowns the elaborationof a Christian ethic of
war.

I propose first to deal with the very ambiguous expression "holywar",
then to study from a theological standpoint the gradualformation of the
idea of a holy war, drawing on the assistanceprovided by Herr Erdmann's
work. I shall recall something of thehistory of the Crusade itself, then
the famous texts of St.Bernard on the two swords. The way will thus be
cleared toappreciate the part played by the Papacy in the military work
ofthe Crusade, and to disentangle its theology.

A. The Expression "Holy War"

We are told that the Middle Ages gradually elaborated the conceptof
the "holy war", a concept that was to come to maturity with theCrusades.
Is this expression "holy war" a happy one? It looksslightly
paradoxical in any case: "war" seems to envisage thetaking of
others, lives by violence, whereas "holiness", accordingto the
Gospel, consists in giving one's own life for love ofothers—how are
the two ideas to be united? To make mattersworse many further
misunderstandings can arise: for their ownconvenience or for lack of
theological analysis, historians toooften lump together under the name
of "holy war" enterprises whichwe shall have to take care to
distinguish. It is unquestionable,on the other hand, that in the Middle
Ages the Church tried, andwith some success, to purify, to rehabilitate,
to Christianize,this most astonishing—if not most disputable—and
surely mostsecular of vocations: that of the soldier. She approved a
certainuse of arms. She even recommended it to the laity when gravedangers
threatened Christendom, just as insistently as she forbadeit to clerics.
If then certain military enterprises especiallyencouraged by the Church
are to be called "holy wars", thephrase is permissible, but on
condition that it be firstdetermined what precise part was played in the
enterprise by thecanonical, and what by the extra-canonical, powers of
the clerics.It will then appear that "holy wars" are bound up
with theexistence or survival of a consecrational type of Christendom.

1. War, Diabolic And Divine

Christianity's first revelation concerning death—echoing thatof
Genesis ii. 17 and iii. 19—sets it forth as the fruit ofsin: per
peccatum, mors (Rom. v. 12). And Christianity's firstglance at war was
to be similar: war has its roots in sin. Theformidable physical havoc it
involves has its source in a hiddendisorder still more terrible in the
eyes of faith. It is thesymptom of the interior and spiritual
catastrophe of a people orof a civilization.

Here we have the explanation of the contradiction that appears inwar
according as we consider it in its source or in itsconsequences.
Considering it in the sin that lies at its root, weshall call it free
and voluntary, directly against nature,satanic. But looking at its
overwhelming effects on the world itwill seem like a fatality, a law of
nature, blind andirresistible, with all the air of being the outcome of
a divinewill. Diabolic or divine? It is both at once. It is diabolic, asis the sin whence it springs, and the great Pope, Nicholas I,could
write to the Bulgarians in 866, in his famous Responsa whichamount to a
code of Christian politics: "The passions that producewar and
battles and the beginnings of all quarrels, are duewithout doubt to the
fraudulent wiles of the devil, and only a manwho is greedy for power,
who is the slave of anger, envy or someother vice could seek for and
rejoice in such things. Wherefore,save in cases of necessity, it would
be well to abstain fromfighting, not only in Lent but at all
times."[697] And yet atbottom, Joseph de Maistre was not wrong in
calling it divine,[698] and to consider it as a paradox so disconcerting that
"there is no way of explaining how it is humanly possible"; theonly
thing to be said is that the fundamental laws of creation,when
transgressed, take terrible and mysterious revenges. Fromthis standpoint
war has all the aspect of a divine chastisement;it is divine in the
sense in which hell is divine. Such abyssescan only be opened up by the
refusal of an infinite good.

2. Wars, Just And Unjust: Peace Stronger In Itself Than War

If it is always sin that causes wars, it can unleash them in twovery
different ways.

First by inspiring them, by informing them; and then they areunjust.
The Scriptural malediction on murder, on all greatoffences against
charity, hangs over them: "Depart from me, yecursed, into
everlasting fire."

Second, by occasioning them, by making them necessary, but withoutinspiring
them or directing them. Then the war will be just,[699]a cruel
necessity, legitimate violence opposing an illegitimateviolence. It will
remain a terrible thing, lamentable, a mark ofopprobrium on mankind, for
it presupposes sin somewhere.[700] Butit will be waged without sin; it
will be morally good,[701] andit may therefore become meritorious. When
the injustice of theadversary puts arms into the hands of the just, then
the just willfight with hearts torn by the injustice out of which the
need forthe war arose. In any event, every just war will aim at peace:
inthe Christian outlook peace, in itself, is a higher, nobler,stronger
work than war; and love, in itself, is stronger thanhate.[702]

3. The Church's First And Second Action

All this being so, the Church's action could find but two pointsof
application. The first was to make every iniquitous warimpossible.[703]
And the second, when war became inevitable andthe only liberty left was
to choose on which side to fight, was tohinder men's choice of the
unjust side. The feudal regime hadmultiplied armies: every lord was the
head of a troop. Was he tofight for justice or for injustice, to be a
brigand or a knight?It is clear enough why the great Cluniac reformers
started theidea of a Christian chivalry.

4. Just Wars And "Holy" Wars

Like all temporal activities that are morally legitimate, justwars
may, as such, receive the approbation of the Church. However,they will
not all receive it on the same grounds, or with the sameinsistence. In
this respect we may divide wars into two greatcategories.

1. Under the first come all just wars for which temporal princestake
the responsibility:

a. Those in which they simply defend their own legitimate temporalinterests.
If they are truly just, or at least have all theappearance of justice—for
error is unfortunately alwayspossible here—they can receive canonical
approbation; they can,like every morally legitimate temporal enterprise,
and withoutdiminution of their essential temporal and secular character,
betouched by a ray of spirituality. That will suffice to invest themwith
a kind of consecration, enough to justify, if you like, thetitle of
Christian war, as one speaks of Christian economics orChristian
politics; always on condition that the necessaryreservations are made,
for a war, even when just, brings terriblesins in its train.

It matters little, for the rest, how this Christian consecrationor
colouring is proclaimed. The prince, for example, can himselfprotest his
Christian intentions, unite his cause with that of theChurch, appeal to
the Christianity of his subjects to persuadethem to follow him. Or
again, he can raise the standard of thesaints, or the sign of the cross:
the Bulgarians, who in theirwars carried a horse's tail for ensign,
asked Pope Nicholas I bywhat it should be replaced. "By what
indeed," he replied, "ifnot by the sign of the Holy
Cross?"[704] Did he, on thataccount, accept the responsibility for
these wars? Obviously not!Or again, the Pope may give his benediction,
may order prayers orthanksgivings for the success of wars which he
considers just orwhich are represented to him as such: he blessed
Charlemagne's waragainst the Saxons,[705] and sent a standard to William
theConqueror, which was raised at the battle of Hastings.

Supposing that these wars were just and conformed in allessentials
with the requirements of Christian doctrine, are we tocall them holy
wars? No. They were in reality wars waged for thedefence of secular
interests, and had no immediate relation withspiritual things.

b. Furthermore, in a consecrational regime, the temporal princesought,
on their own responsibility—whether they actspontaneously, or are
called to their duty by the canonical power—to draw the sword in
defence of their Christian subjectsagainst those who attack them in
their Christian faith or life—against those, for example, who propagate heresy
or infidelity:for in a consecrational regime it is a crime under the
common lawlike theft or murder. Such wars may be encouraged and approved
bythe Church more strongly than those before mentioned. Their end isthe
defence of spiritual values, in so far, of course, as thesevalues have
taken their place with other political values of theconsecrational
city.[706]

In this first category are those wars which have been undertakenby
bishops, whether as secular princes, charged with a regulartemporal
administration, or as supplying, on occasion, fordefaulting secular
power.

2. In the second category come three types of wars—taking itfor
granted always that they are just: [707]

a. Those for which the Pope takes the responsibility, acting ashead
of the States of the Church. These are essentially politicalwars. But
seeing that the Pontifical State is then guaranteeingthe independence of
the supreme apostolic power, these wars becomecharged with spiritual
significance. They can the more easily becalled Christian. Such were the
wars of the Pope against the firstSaracens who came up the Tiber to
subjugate the Roman territory.

b. Those for which the Pope takes the responsibility, acting asprotector
of a consecrational Christendom. They are stillpolitical wars, but
directed to the defence of the political orderinasmuch as it is
consecrational, inasmuch as it requires visiblemembership of the Church
from all its citizens. Hence these warsalso take on a Christian and
spiritual character. Such were thewars directed against the Mussulman
invasion, which came to thefore in the reign of Urban II, and were
called by historians suchas Ranke, and later Erdmann, the "popular
Crusade".

c. Between these two types of war, the one waged for theindependence
of the Pontifical State, the other for theindependence of Christendom,
there is room for a transitionaltype. When the armies of a prince who
has been excommunicated asheretic or schismatic, march on Rome to set up
an anti-pope, it isnot merely the civil principate of the Pope that is
endangered,but the fate of all Christendom. The Pope may recruit his
militaryforces not only as Prince of the States of the Church, but also
asprotector of Christendom; for under a consecrational regime it isthe
very basis of political order, the constitution of Christendom, that schism and
heresy imperil. Consider, forexample, the wars of Gregory VII against
King Henry, wars whichthe historians I have mentioned called the
"hierarchic Crusade",and which they consider to have opened
the way to the "popularCrusade".

Thus we have three types of wars: those waged for the defence ofthe
Pontifical State, those waged for the defence of Christendomagainst its
internal enemies such as heretics and schismatics, andthose waged for
its defence against external enemies, such asIslam. These three sorts of
wars stand in strong contrast withother just wars by reason of the very
special relationship theybear to spiritual things. And, if we grant that
the expression"holy war"—which is not to be found in St.
Thomas is capable ofany acceptable meaning, it is here that it should be
used. One mayvery well say, for example, with H. Pissard,[708] that holy
warsare just wars which the Church not only encourages but alsorewards
with her spiritual favours. But this is not to say thatthey are
undertaken and directed by the Church, that is to say bythe canonical
power of the Church: they are undertaken anddirected by the
extra-canonical power of the Pope acting as headof the Pontifical State
or as protector of Christendom.

5. The Church, As Such, Does Not Make War

There is no room, in my opinion, for any third category of war;for
wars, that is, for which the mediate or immediateresponsibility would
fall on the Church as such, on the canonicalpower bequeathed by Christ
to His Apostles. So understood, the"holy war" has become a
pure contradiction ever since theintroduction of the law of the Gospel.

It would speedily open the way for the old ideas of conversion byconstraint,
armed mission, forced Baptism—ideas that hauntedthe imagination of
many men of action, and even theologians; butrejected by the Church as
such, and not to be imputed to herwithout injustice.

If it is clear that the Church does not countenance conversion byforce,
can she at least, and as the Church, as the Body of Christ,take up arms
when attacked, and defend her spiritual treasures asthe kingdoms of this
world defend their material treasures? St.Augustine did not think so;
neither the practice nor the authenticdoctrines of the Church compel us
to think so; and the words ofOur Lord who would not have the sword drawn
in defence of HisKingdom, can be received in their plain sense by
Catholictheology.[709] "Suavi jugo tuo dominare, Domine, in medioinimicomm tuorum."[710]

B. The Formation Of An Ethic Of The Holy War

1. The New Testament

"Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world", forall that is in the world is "the concupiscence of the flesh, andthe
concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life"; "the wholeworld
lies in the power of evil"; but "the world passeth away andthe
concupiscence thereof" (1 John ii. 15-17; V. 19). Ifconcupiscence
and sin lie at the roots of every war, then everywar is condemned in its
roots by these words, in which the lastsurviving Apostle recalls the
essential Christian attitude to theworld and to life. That is too clear
to need comment.

But not all these wars, as I have said, are necessarily inspiredby
concupiscence and sin. There are just wars. Are they mentionedin the
Gospel? It is silent enough as a general rule on the valueof temporal
and cultural activities. Does it speak of the justwar?

Christ says enough about it to let us know that we are not to drawthe
sword to defend either Himself (Matt. xxvi. 52; John xviii.II) or His
Kingdom (John xviii. 36).

But resort to the sword in temporal causes is not forbidden.Temporal
justice, in the first place, may employ it, as St. Paulexpressly says to
the Romans (xiii. 4). And as for war, St.Augustine was to write that if
it were always culpable no matterwhat the circumstances, John the
Baptist would not have been ableto recommend the soldiers who consulted
him about their salvationto be content with their pay (Luke iii. 14),
and Jesus, havingpraised the faith of the Centurion (Matt. viii. 10),
would nothave failed to ask him to abandon the army.[711]

The use of the sword is thus both forbidden and authorized in theNew
Testament. In later centuries this was to lead tocontradictory
interpretations. There is really no contradiction:the sword is forbidden
on the spiritual plane, and authorized onthe temporal plane.

2. ST. AUGUSTINE AND ST. GREGORY

It has been said that St. Augustine and St. Gregory, the firstspeaking
of heretics, the second of pagans, brought to light inthe West those
principles which, having been obscured for severalcenturies, were to be
used to justify the two forms of holy war,the Crusade of Gregory VII
against the heretics and that of UrbanII against the Mussulmans.[712]
What exactly was the thought ofthese two Doctors?

1. St. Augustine sets out to justify those wars which the OldTestament
represents as undertaken at God's command. In hisQuaestiones in
Heptateuchum,[713] speaking of the capture of Haï;by Josue (Josue
viii), he recalls first that those who have theright to take up arms (a
right not held by all) can do so only fora just cause; then, having
defined a just war, he adds: "But thosewars also are just, without
doubt, which are ordained by GodHimself, in whom is no iniquity, and who
knows every man's merits.The leader of the army in such wars, or the
people itself, are notso much the authors of the war as the instrument
[non tam auctorbelli quam minister]." In the De Civitate Dei [714]
he declaresthat God Himself has made exceptions to the non occides:
"They didnot impugn this precept who made war at God's command [Deoauctore], or who, representing public justice and in conformitywith
His laws, have put criminals to death." That is why we areable to
applaud the conduct of Abraham, question Jephta's, andexcuse Samson's.
"With these exceptions, then, which are justifiedeither by a just
law, or by a special intimation from God, thefountain of all justice,
whoever kills either himself or anotheris guilty of murder." There
are just slayings at all times, andin the Old Testament there are wars
having God for author. So saysSt. Augustine.

He recalls, on the other hand, the Church's right to resort to thesecular
arm, notably against heretics.

Are we then to conclude, as Erdmann does,[715] that St. Augustineraised
the repression of the Donatists by the Emperor Honorius tothe rank of a
holy war, of which God Himself would be the authorand the soldiers His
instruments? But Augustine constantlyprotests against the capital
punishment meted out to the heretics,even when they were known to be
guilty of murder; he fears lestthe blood of the enemies of the Church
should throw a stain on theChurch's honour.[716] How then can it be
supposed that in theslayings of the Donatists he sees a war like those
of the OldTestament with God Himself for author?

In point of fact, "it was not as mandatories of the Church but invirtue
of their own sovereign power that the Emperors dealtharshly with the
heretics".[717] Honorius did not wait for thedelegation of the
African bishops to issue his edict against theDonatists in 405, nor for
Augustine's assent to proceed to theinfliction of the punishment of
death in 409.[718] However, asthe latter said, when the Emperor decrees
the supreme penalty itremains open to the judges to soften the
sentence.[719] Augustinecertainly affirms the Emperor's right to act as
a Christianprince, and to consider heresy as an offence against the
commonlaw;[720] to that extent we already have the consecrational orderof the Middle Ages. But he wishes that "Catholicism alone shouldprescribe
the laws that protect its security, and that it shouldremain judge in
each case of the need to ask the tribunals toapply these
laws".[721] The secular arm would then function as apure instrument
of the Church, and that is why it ought to actmildly and never go so far
as to shed blood.

2. St. Gregory's outlook on the matter is different. In connectionwith
an expedition against the heretics who rise against theCatholic Church,
corrupt the faith, and infect members of theChristian body with their
venom, he urges Gennadius, Patrician andExarch of Africa, to use force
against them for the good of theChristian people, and to conduct these
ecclesiastical battlesvaliantly like a warrior of the Lord
[ecclesiastica praelia sicutbellatores Domini fortiter dimicatis]; he
suggests the re-establishment of the unity of the dismembered Churches and praysthe Lord to grant him the victory.[722] Indubitably, there ishere an
appeal to the sword and to the use of the sword to defendthe Christians
against the turbulence of the heretics. It isalready, if you like, a
holy war. But Gennadius was not under theorders of Gregory. The
expedition was undertaken in the name ofthe secular power. The Pope does
not try to take theresponsibility to himself. He intervenes to stir up
the Exarch todefend the Church. If he speaks of
"ecclesiastical" wars and "warriors of the Lord", we need
not take the phrases tooliterally.

What was Gregory's attitude as regards the pagans? He writes tothe
same Gennadius to praise him for preparing himself for battleby prayer.
He congratulates him on his victories which, bystopping the incursions
of the Moors of Libya, and by widening thefrontiers of an empire in
which God is duly honoured, will enablethe name of Christ to be spread
abroad by the preaching of thefaith.[723] There is here no question of
attacking the pagansjust because they are pagans; but of a war that is
politicallyjustified and one of whose fortunate consequences will be tointroduce and favour Christian preaching among the heathen. Theimmediate
aim of such a war is the subjugation of paganpopulations, and this, as
Gregory hopes, will condition asubsequent missionary activity under the
protection of the State.Erdmann agrees. But I cannot agree with him when
he speaks of a "Gregorian missionary war" or when he assures us that
Gregory tookthe perilous step that leads to armed missionary
aggression.[724]

The Kingdom of God cannot take the responsibility for defendingitself
in arms: that is the lesson of the New Testament. But theNew Testament
nowhere forbids the secular powers to defend theKingdom of God, when
unjustly attacked, by the ordinary means attheir disposal; and on the
hypothesis of a consecrationalChristendom—bound to take measures
against interference withspiritual values that have become fundamental
political values—such defence becomes a duty to which the canonical power may,
atneed, recall them. Thus, from the Gospel to St. Augustine and toSt.
Gregory, we may undoubtedly observe a process of doctrinalexplication,
but no break.

3. The Oscillations Of Medieval Thought

Medieval thought on the relations between Christianity and war wasdominated
by two principles, both incontestable and yet opposed.They seem at first
to be in active conflict, until the moment whenone of them, gradually
gaining ground, took possession, about theend of the first millennium,
of the whole area to which it had anyright in a consecrational regime.

The first of these principles is that war is always illicit forthe
kingdom of God, which must not resort to the sword. The secondis that
war can be licit for the kingdoms of this world, and isindeed inevitable
in view of human perversity. Everywhere iscombat, but here it is
spiritual (militia spiritualis) and therecarnal (militia saecularis).

These two principles are clear, and it might seem easy to confineeach
within its proper concrete limits. In reality, the operationis delicate,
for not only do the same men belong to both kingdoms,so that war is
allowed them on one count and disallowed on theother, but in a
consecrational regime certain spiritual valuespenetrate the structure of
society and there take on a politicalsignificance and character and call
for secular means of defence.Hence the uncertainties and fluctuations
found in the medievalwriters in connection with the conduct (a) of
laymen, (b) ofclerics, and (c) of the Sovereign Pontiff.

a. That the emperor, the king, the prince have the right incertain
circumstances to declare war, is doubted by none. If theprince is
Christian it is as a Christian (in a Christian manner)that he is to make
war, and, more generally, it is as a Christianthat he should perform all
his temporal tasks; and so doing he maymerit the Church's approval. It
remains true, although this wasnot then made precise, that he makes war
not in his capacity as aChristian, as a member of the Kingdom of God,
but in his capacityas prince of an earthly kingdom.

Over the case of the soldier there is a certain hesitation. As amember
of the Church he cannot shed blood, and yet that is what hehas to do in
virtue of his profession. Hence the curious customattested by the
penitentials, but disappearing as ideas becamemore precise, of imposing
an ecclesiastical penance for killinganyone in battle, and correlatively
of forbidding public penitentsto bear arms and do military service.[725]

The shadow that still lay over the vocation of the soldier wasdissipated
by degrees. The weakening of the royal power and theformation of the
feudal system obliged the Church, if she did notwant to abandon the
nobles to their own anarchy, not only toremind them of the general
duties of a Christian, but also toindicate the ends for which it was
permitted them, indeedcommanded them, to fight. A Christian ethic of war
in function ofthe consecrational regime began to develop. To the model
ofmonastic sanctity and clerical sanctity, were added those of laysanctity
and knightly sanctity. But it was done with prudence. Odoof Cluny's
hero, Gerard d'Aurillac—as also the Abbot ofFleury's, the English
King, Edmund—triumphed without spillingblood.[726] It is true that,
for a long time past, saints who hadbeen soldiers had been proposed for
the veneration of thefaithful. But these had achieved sanctity on the
fringes, so tospeak, of the profession of arms, by martyrdom like St.
Sebastian,St. Maurice and St. George, or by renouncing the soldiership
ofthis world to enter that of God, like St. Martin.[727] We have tocome
down to Erlembald, the military leader of the Pataria ofMilan, to reach
the first knight in history who was held to haveachieved sanctity by the
exercise of his profession. And alreadywe come in sight of the
"holy war", for Erlembald had received amandate from the Pope
to meet the violence of married andsimoniacal clerics with
violence.[728] It was clear enoughhenceforth that even the vocation of
arms could lead to sanctity.Even before the First Crusade the Liber de
Vita Christiana ofBonizo of Sutri, which contains a code of obligations
for knights,the first we possess, calls upon them to fight for the poor,
forwidows, for orphans, for the safety of the fatherland, and for thesuppression of heretics and schismatics.[729]

The great movement of reform, begun at Cluny, was not confined toclerics
but extended to the laity; and just as there had been,after Constantine,
an attempt to Christianize the vocation of theprince, so did the
institution of chivalry set out to Christianizethe vocation of the
soldier.

b. Clerics were still forbidden to bear arms. But the bishopsaccepted
secular responsibilities, and after that it was difficultfor them to
keep clear of war. They found themselves engaged in itin their character
as temporal princes. When the great movement ofthe Peace of God was
organized, which attempted to banish warfinally from Christendom,[730]
the bishops raised troops againstthose knights who did not want
peace.[731] There were those againwho found themselves, for example, at
Milan, at the head of thecommunal militia.[732] Fulbert of Chartres,
careful only for thesacred character of the bishops, was scandalized at
such conductwhich seemed to him a betrayal, since the Church should
wield nonebut the spiritual sword. But his contemporary, Bernard of
Angers,thinking of the defence of the consecrational political order,goes so far as to pronounce the panegyric of a prior who repelleda
band of malefactors at the head of his monks, and who prefiguredin a way
the "military orders" of St. Bernard.[733]

c. As to the Pope, it is clear that he cannot make war in virtueof
his apostolic power whereby he is vicar of Christ and head of aKingdom
that is not of this world. What he can do here is toencourage, approve,
bless, indeed reward by spiritual favours,those temporal enterprises
which, being just and wholesome, moreor less directly help in the long
run the spiritual progress ofmankind. Consequently he can approve a war
that he sees as just,and ban another that seems to him iniquitous. Such
papalinterventions were not always without their inconveniences; theycould be prompted by incomplete and one-sided information, not tomention
prejudice and passion, and raise terrible cases ofconscience for
Christians who found themselves fighting in goodfaith in the wrong camp.
Moreover the benedictions invoked on thejust cause, and the maledictions
levelled against the unjust, werenot always followed by immediate effect
even when the Pope was asaint: the justice immanent in the world is not,
to be sure, anillusory notion, but its workings may disappoint the hopes
of ageneration; they commonly lack that point and promptitude which afaith that often seems to us a little naive was apt to expect. Themore
weighty the events of history the slower seems their comingto
fulfilment, the more unforeseeable their consequences.[734]

It is clear, on the contrary, that by reason of the politicalpower
conjoined with the apostolic the medieval Popes could take,or cause to
be taken, all the military measures needed for thedefence of the States
of the Church. That scandalizes no one; Sergius II is blamed for not having more
efficiently protectedRome against the Saracens;[735] John VIII is not
blamed forhaving posted a flotilla at the mouth of the Tiber,[736] nor
PiusIX for having mobilized his Zouaves against Garibaldi's bands: forin all these cases the Pope acted as prince and not as pontiff—although
the older Popes were less concerned to make thedistinction than those of
more recent times. The true scandaloccurs when certain Popes, whether in
reality or appearance, allowaffairs of State to gain the upper hand in
their hearts.

But it is especially surprising to see some Popes, whose holinessis
undisputed, resort to force not only to assure the independenceof the
patrimony of St. Peter and of tributary lands, but also forthe success
of much wider temporal causes. They begin, doubtless,by urging the
Emperor and the Christian kings to arm, but whenthese remain deaf to
their exhortations they take into their ownhands great tasks the like of
which their predecessors had neverbefore assumed: they call to their aid
the princes and knights ofall lands to defend a Christendom threatened
in its entirety byenemies from within, like the heretics, or from
without, like theMussulmans. Clearly they are no longer acting as
princes of thePontifical State. By what right then do they assume the
leadershipof armies? Nobody at the time could say exactly.[737] But fortheir part they did not hesitate. They did what they thought theyought
to do for the common good. Certain great temporal interestswhich, in a
consecrational regime, involved great spiritualinterests, were
threatened. They alone had the power to defendthem effectively. Their
duty was to act.

The theory came later, and hesitantly. Manegold of Lautenbachtried to
justify the undertakings of Gregory VII against theschismatics and
excommunicated Henricians by alleging texts of St.Augustine approving
the use of force against the Donatists: butSt. Augustine would on no
account have the blood of the hereticson the hands of the Church, and
what had to be justified wasprecisely the Pope's resort to arms and
shedding of blood. Nextwere brought forward the wars ordered and
glorified in the OldTestament. They serve to demonstrate, no doubt, that
there can bejust wars, but do they suffice to prove that in the New
Testament(a spiritual, not a fleshly covenant) in which spiritual
realitiesare clearly distinguished from material, in which the worship
ofGod is freed from Jewish nationalism and love for the Church isdistinguished
from love for the fatherland,[738] the Kingdom ofGod can defend itself
by arms, and that the Popes, even as Vicarsof Jesus Christ, can wage
war? But if not, how can one justify theconduct of these Popes? What
right had they to act in the armedrepression of heresy and in the
organization of the movement—toall appearance aggressive—of the
Crusade? The answer has beensuggested already. It was not in virtue of
any canonical right,but by a right annexed, extra-canonical, as
protectors of aconsecrational Christendom.

The oscillations of medieval thought were between two extremeprinciples,
one forbidding all war to the Kingdom of God, theother allowing it to
the kingdoms of this world. The difficultywas to trace the lines of
demarcation between the two zones. It isidentical with the line dividing
the canonical or spiritual powerfrom the political or temporal. But it
is not identical with theline dividing clerics from laymen. For the
clerics could thenlegitimately enjoy extra-canonical powers.
Prince-bishops existed;and the Pope himself, besides his apostolic
jurisdiction,exercised a temporal authority, whether as Prince of thePontifical State or as protector of Christendom.

There is certainly nothing in the Gospel to authorize the Pope asVicar
of Christ and successor of Peter to take on himself theresponsibility
for a political government and consequently for theuse of the sword. But
neither is there anything that forbids himto annex to his spiritual
power, if the general good shouldimperiously demand it, an
extra-canonical power of a temporalnature. Now, supposing a
consecrational Christendom, theseinterventions of the Pope in temporal
affairs can be fullyjustified. To preserve the independence of his
apostolic power thePope was in fact constrained to assume the political
government ofthe city of Rome. And to safeguard the common good of a
consecrational Christendom, a common good that is political inessence
but presupposes the profession of the Catholic faith andvisible
membership of the Church, he saw himself obliged tosupport the crusading
movement. It is from this standpoint that wemust judge the pre-Crusade
of Gregory VII against the schismaticand excommunicated Emperor, and the
great popular Crusade of UrbanII against the Mussulmans.

C. The Crusades

1. The Historical Facts

1. From the standpoint of the secular historian the Crusadesappear as
a phase in that gigantic struggle between East and West,which oscillates
more and more dangerously as history advances. Itbegan with the Median
wars, and is far from ended yet. It wasmarked by the conquests of
Alexander, by the invasion of the Huns,by the successive victories of
the Persian Sassanids and of theEastern Roman Empire, by the
overwhelming triumph of Islam whichin the middle of the seventh century
was "the great revenge ofAsia", the "ground swell"
that submerged North Africa and passedthe Pyrenees; by the Byzantine
re-conquest which at the end of thetenth century threw back the Arabs
for a brief space beyondArmenia and the Middle Euphrates, by the thrust
of the Turkishinvasion which in the last quarter of the eleventh century
whollyengulfed Syria and most of Anatolia. "At this date the
integrityof Europe could be saved only by an outburst of conscious
energy,in point of fact only by the entry on the scene of the youthfulforces representing the renewed West since the great Romanrenaissance
of the eleventh century, and it is this effort that isproperly called
the Crusades."[739] Whereas the West had becomeChristian, the East
had passed to a considerable extent under thehegemony of the Crescent,
so that the Christian faith, which inthis conflict of peoples and
cultures was represented only on oneside, seemed to have its destinies
bound up with that of theWestern world. Above the great duel which, in
the first half ofthe seventh century, took place between the Persian
king KhosroesParviz and the Emperor Heraclius, and in which he saw the
firstCrusade, the chronicler William of Tyre held up the true cross,"symbol
and prize of the struggle";[740] and the great basileiswho, in the
tenth century, led against Islam what may be calledstrictly "the
first of the Crusades in date",[741] the GreekCrusade, aimed not
merely at restoring the old Roman frontiers butalso at "liberating
the Holy Sepulchre" and "restoring Jerusalemto the faith of
Christ".[742] They were repelled by the Turks,and it was the Latin
West that took up the task of defending theCross against the Crescent.

2. Whence came the moral impetus, the dynamism of the Crusades?They
were closely integrated in a larger historical fact—theawakening of
Europe, the first European renaissance after the fallof the Roman Empire—and
they were one of the manifestations ofa spiritual power of expansion,
becoming eventually warlike,demographic, artistic, whose other effects
in the eleventh centurywere the Cluniac movement, the flowering of
Romanesque art, thedevelopment of pilgrimages, the constitution of the
Pontificalmonarchy and the warlike expeditions against the Arabs in
Spain.For the Crusade "if by that we understand the defence of
Latinityagainst Islam, in no wise began, as the textbooks teach, in theLevant and in 1097, but well back in the first half of theeleventh
century and in the extreme West—in Spain—whereGregory VII in
particular warmly encouraged the enrolment ofFrench barons under the
standard of the Reconquista. Gregory'sgesture against the Mussulmans of
Spain is the prelude to that ofUrban II against the Mussulmans of
Syria".[743] This last fact isnot without its significance: the
Crusade, up to a certain point,appeared as the reply of medieval
Christendom to the principle ofthe holy war proclaimed by Mahomet
himself against the pagantribes of Arabia,[744] which was now imperiling
the veryexistence of Christianity. "The Eastern Crusade was thus
bound upwith the Spanish reconquest. Even the Italian shipping, longbefore
it helped the Crusaders to capture the maritime towns ofSyria and
Palestine, had participated in the struggle againstIslam by helping the
Spanish to reconquer the Balearics. The Dieule veut! of 1095 was only in
appearance a new formula. For morethan a century God had willed it, the
Papacy had proclaimed it,and the barons of the Midi and of Northern
France had fulfilledthis will on the marches of Castile and
Aragon."[745] WhereasAlexander and Saladin embody in a way
"the stream of history, theineluctable chain of causes and
effects", the first symbolisingthe revenge of Hellenism on the
barbarian world, the secondpersonifying the irresistible counter-attack,
Pope Urban II,proclaiming to the Council of Clermont on the 27th
November 1095,"that in view of the Turkish conquest and the
Byzantine collapse,the West must be defended not only on the marches of
Spain, butalso on the shores of Asia", appeared as coming "to
halt and turnback the course of events". The Crusade which he had
long beenplanning and whose inception was due "neither to the
appeal ofAlexis Comnenus, nor to the pilgrimage and preaching of Peter
theHermit", was "the saving reaction, the defensive rebound of
Europein the face of the greatest danger it had ever been in since thefall of the Roman Empire. The moral unity of the Roman world wasnow
suddenly re-knit from the Atlantic to the Danube and indeed tothe
Bosphorus, to postpone for three and a half centuries thefatal collapse
of 1453".[746] Such were the main lines of thepicture on the eve of
the First Crusade.

3. The initiative in the matter of the Crusade thus came from thePope.
By choosing for its leader the Bishop of Puy, Adhemar ofMonteil, the
Pope showed that "he wanted to keep the direction ofthe movement in
his own hands, the territories to be conquered bythe Crusaders
undoubtedly being, in his mind, another patrimony ofthe Holy
See".[747] In fact, after the conquest of Jerusalem, wesee the
Archbishop of Pisa, Daimbert, become Patriarch of the HolyCity, claim
possession. "The Holy Land belonged to Christ the Kingwhose
representative the Patriarch was. Thus the Patriarch was thesole legal
possessor of the land, and it was only as hismandatories and vassals
that the Defender of the Sepulchre and thePrince of Antioch could
exercise authority."[748] The Latinsociety of the Levant thus
presented itself "as a replica of theLatin society of the West. At
the centre, a pontifical see—Jerusalem instead of Rome—commanding vassal
kings. But what waspossible in the midst of the Christian world was
hardly possiblehere in this entrenched borderland on the threshold of
the desert,at the mercy of the first Arab or Turkish raid".[749]
Daimbert'sPatriarchate was of short duration. At the death of Godfrey deBouillon the Holy City passed into the hands of Baldwin I, founderof
the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which did not differ from othertemporal
kingdoms.

2. Various Meanings Of The Word Crusade

The above recital shows that what is commonly called the historyof
the Crusades covers several different types of fact that needto be
carefully distinguished:

a. First come the pilgrimages. The Crusade, then understood in itsmost
spiritual sense, "is, by definition, a work of piety, thefulfilment
of a vow, the laying up of merits, so much so that manywho took the
Cross merely went to the Holy Land and, like CountRobert of Flanders in
1177, let it be known that they came to prayand in no wise to make
war".[750]

b. But the time came when these pilgrimages led to fighting. "Theessential
thing then was to fight, and not to come back withouthaving killed
Saracens, even if that involved breaking truce,upsetting all the patient
policy of the Franco-Syrian colonists,and finally leaving these latter
to struggle on in the midst ofinextricable difficulties."[751]
These expeditions deserve to becalled raids and brigand expeditions
rather than Crusades.

c. The name "Crusade" attaches, on the other hand, to militaryexpeditions
conducted according to the law of nations, undertakenin response to
papal appeals and aiming at the liberation of theHoly Land and the
protection of Christendom against the Mussulmaninvasions.

d. Lastly, to the spirit of the Crusade defined as an outburst ofenthusiasm,
of adventure, of transient pilgrimage, we may oppose,as Grousset
constantly does, the spirit of permanent occupation,of colonisation, of
political action, which presided at theformation and maintenance of the
Frankish monarchy in the East.

The only one of these elements which raises a problem thatconcerns us
here is the third, relating to those organizedexpeditions of the
Christian West, at once spiritual and warlike,begun in Spain at the
behest of the Popes and carried by them tothe threshold of Asia.[752] By
what title did the Pope intervene?Was it as the head of Christianity or
as protector of Christendom?Were the Crusades the warlike expeditions of
Christianity or ofChristendom?

D. St. Bernard's Distinction Of The Two Swords

The capture of Edessa by the Turks on the 23rd December 1144 andagain
on the 3rd November 1146, followed by the massacre anddeportation of the
Armenian population, marked the beginning ofthe return wave of Mussulman
conquest. It was thus that it wasunderstood in the West, where the news
of the event provoked theSecond Crusade. Pope Eugenius III gave the task
of preaching it toSt. Bernard. After reading to the immense assembly at
Vezelay(31st March 1146) the Bull exhorting the Christians to "take
upthe cross and your arms" to stop the advance of the infidels, todefend the Eastern Church liberated by the first Crusaders, torescue
those thousands of Christian prisoners whom the Mussulmansheld in
chains, the saint succeeded, by the fire of his eloquence,in raising a
wave of enthusiasm not unlike that of 1095. TheSecond Crusade was fixed
for the following year. It has beenremarked that instead of being a more
or less inorganicinternational migration, it set on foot two regular
nationalarmies commanded by the two most powerful sovereigns of the West—the
King of France, Louis VII, and the Emperor of Germany,Conrad III—and
that it was thus distinguished from the FirstCrusade "in theory at
least, since the religious origin of theCrusade had obliged the knights
to drag after them in their wake awhole crowd of pilgrims and penitents,
devoid of all militaryvalue and impeding the movement of the
troops".[753]

How did St. Bernard explain the alliance of the cross and thesword?
He had recourse to the image, since become famous, of thetwo swords.

In the book he dedicated to the Templars the saint in a generalway
justified the use of arms by the fact that John the Baptistdid not ask
the soldiers to lay down their arms, but simply to becontented with
their pay (Luke iii. 14).[754] He gave St. Paul'swords reminding the
Romans that the civil power bears the sword asGod's minister (xiii. 4);
he quoted the wars of the Old Testament;and, as a climax, recalled the
example of the Chief of all knightswho one day armed Himself, if not
with the sword at least with thelash, to chase the traders from the
Temple. After all this, hewent on to approve of the drawing of both the
swords of thefaithful to repel the heathen who make war, oppress the
Christianpeople, and dream of depriving Jerusalem of all its inestimableriches, of profaning the Holy Places, and of possessing themselvesfor
ever of the sanctuary of God.[755]

After the loss of Edessa St. Bernard urged the Pope to draw thematerial
sword himself and go to the aid of the Eastern Church: "Since the Saviour
suffers anew where once He died for us, both theswords must be drawn
which he allowed on the first occasion [Lukexxii. 38]. And who should
draw them but you? Both swords of Petermust be unsheathed as often as
need be, the one at his command,the other by his hand. And, indeed, of
the one of which it seemedthat he ought not to make use it was said: Put
up thy sword intoits sheath. Therefore that too was his, but not to be
drawn by hisown hand. I think that now is the time when necessity bids
both tobe drawn for the defence of the Eastern Church."[756] There
aretherefore two swords quite distinct from each other, one of whichPeter
takes immediately into his own hand, and one that is takenimmediately by
the prince. But Peter can, and in certain verygrave circumstances ought
to, command the prince to draw hissword.

Finally, at the end of his life, St. Bernard makes the samedistinction
in his De Consideratione. But the circumstances havechanged. It is no
longer a question of encouraging the Pope to theCrusade against the
heathen, but of recommending him to be gentleto his own flock. He is to
gain them not by steel but by words.And though the material sword is
rightly his, to use it unwiselywould be in a way to usurp it: "Why
do you seek to usurp the swordthat once already you have been ordered to
put back into itsscabbard? But he who denies that it is yours does not
sufficientlyconsider the words of the Saviour: 'Put back THY sword into
itssheath' [John xviii. 11]. It is therefore yours, and to be drawn,no
doubt, at your bidding, but not by your hand. For otherwise, ifit
concerned you in no way, to the Apostles who said: 'Here aretwo swords',
the Saviour would not have replied: 'It is enough',but: 'It is too
much.' Both swords therefore belong to theChurch, the spiritual and the
material. The material sword is tobe drawn in defence of the Church, the
spiritual by the Church;the spiritual by the hand of the priest, the
material by thesoldier, but at a sign from the priest, and on the order
of theEmperor."[757]

The Church, says St. Bernard, possesses the material sword becauseshe
can command princes to draw it. But when the material swordspills blood,
whose is the responsibility? Does it fall on theChurch, or on the
prince? The problem arising from the bloodyrepression of heresy arises
again in connection with the Crusade.

E. Theology Of The Crusade

I have no intention here of setting out all the varioustheological
explanations that have been proposed for the Crusade.Erdmann has noted
that, contrary to what happened in the quarrelover investitures, it was
practice rather than theory that tookthe precedence in the matter of the
holy war.[758] The Popes,prompted as I believe by the Holy Spirit, had a
lively sense ofthe new responsibility that lay on them at this
historical moment.They acted accordingly. The theoretical justification
cameafterwards. It took forms that may seem to us too vague, orinsufficient,
or disputable; even erroneous. We need neither theDonation of
Constantine nor the False Decretals to justify theStates of the Church
and the authority of the great Pontiffs ofthe Middle Ages. Nor have we
any need, in order to justify theInquisition (as far as it can be
justified), to credit thecanonical power that Christ left with His
Church with a right toinflict the punishment of death. Similarly, we are
not obliged tojustify the wars against the heretics, nor yet the
Crusades, onthe grounds alleged by contemporary writers: to force St.Augustine's texts, for example, on the suppression of theDonatists,
so as to make them cover the death penalty, or tocompare Pope Urban II,
preaching the First Crusade, with Mosesleading the Hebrews to the
Promised Land. Behind all thesetheoretical explanations, disputable or
plainly incorrect, we mayperhaps recognize a practical attitude in the
Sovereign Pontiffswhich can be shown as justified in the light of the
laterdevelopment of Christian doctrine. For I think that the precisionsfurnished, for example, by Leo XIII on the relations of Church andState
will enable the theologian to appreciate more exactly howcertain facts
of the past, such as the Inquisition, the warsagainst heresy and the
Crusades, stand with regard to the powersand the life of the Church.
Doubtless this standpoint is not thatof the historian, but that of the
speculative theologian. But thehistorian himself should, I think,
recognize its legitimacy.

Let us see then how, from this standpoint, we should understandthe
distinction of the two swords as formulated by St. Bernard onthe
occasion of the Second Crusade.

In accordance with what has been said there are, in the abstract,three
possible interpretations.

It could be said first that those who dispose of military forcesare
acting as pure instruments of the canonical power, that is ofthe Church.
The Church is the principal agent, and on her finallylies the
responsibility for the blood spilt. On thisinterpretation the Crusades
would be Church affairs; they wouldpertain directly to the Kingdom of
God. Such a view might be inconformity with the doctrine of Suarez: it
is not in conformitywith that of St. Augustine, nor, I think, with that
of St. Thomas.Its defect is to make the analogous too much like the
univocal, tofail to make a clear enough distinction between the ways of
God'sKingdom and those of Caesar's, between the characteristic means ofthe former, which, even when intrinsically and immediatelymaterial,
should always, by reason of the immediate ends theyenvisage, submit to
the attraction of the spiritual and bepurified, moderated and softened;
and the means of the latter,which, serving purely temporal ends, can
remain severe and evenbloody.

War of course can be waged for temporal ends that are very noble,and
sometimes closely connected with the maintenance or progressof the faith
in a given region. The well-recognized piety ofcertain military leaders,
such as St. Louis on the Christian side,[759] led them to seek the spiritual
before all else, to effacethemselves before it, to reduce themselves,
and their armed forcestoo if that were possible, to the condition of a
pure instrument.[760] And yet I think one may claim that an armed force refuses
ofits very nature to be handled as a pure instrument of thespiritual.[761]

We now come to the second explanation. Those who dispose of themilitary
force are acting as secondary principal causes. TheChurch intervenes
only to remind them of their task, of their dutyto act according to
purely temporal laws of action which are otherthan her own. The Crusades
are directly temporal affairs; theypertain directly to the kingdoms of
this world. What they aim atimmediately is the temporal safety of the
Christian West. But thedefence by arms of the Christian West, of the
social order thencalled Christendom,[762] though forbidden to the Church
as such—to the canonical power—could nevertheless become the subjectof
a precept addressed by the Church to the Christian princes, andof
spiritual favours granted to all who would undertake it—since it appeared not
only as a legitimate work, but also as acondition of the preservation of
the faith in so many souls. TheChurch used her canonical power to preach
the Crusade, but she didnot directly assume the responsibility for the
Crusade understoodas a warlike expedition. Theologically, this thesis is
beyondreproach. Let us suppose a Christendom of the secular type, acivilization
sufficiently penetrated by the influence of theChurch to deserve to be
called a Christian civilization. Supposethat one day it has to defend
itself in arms against acivilization of the naturalist or atheist type,
and that theSovereign Pontiff intervenes morally in the conflict to
supportone camp and to forbid Christians to fight in the other. Then itis to the above explanation that we should turn. But the Crusadeswere
more than that. They occurred in a different atmosphere andcannot, I
think, be fully accounted for in this way. If theattitude of the
medieval Popes is to be thoroughly justified wemust take into account a
further consideration.

Hence a third explanation. Owing to the failure of the imperialpower
the Pope was compelled to accept the responsibility for theCrusade, not
as Vicar of Christ and Head of Christianity, but asprotector of a
consecrational Christendom, being bound to act onaccount of the
spiritual values then involved in the politicalorder, values which
therefore could and should be defended bypolitical resources. Thus it
was in virtue of a temporalextra-canonical power that the Pope then
intervened, exercisingauthority over the princes considered as pure
instruments for thecommon good of Christendom. To be responsible for a
just war, forjust bloodshed, was no sin for a temporal power; it was
ethicallygood and so could be made meritorious by charity; but it wouldhave been a sin for the Church, who has to conquer by being readyto
shed her own blood, like Christ, not by spilling that ofothers. What is
allowable for the kingdoms of this world, whoseends and means are
temporal, would be certainly illicit for theKingdom of God, whose end
and means are spiritual. The Crusademight very suitably be a war waged
by Christendom against Islam.It could not be a war of Christianity
against Islam, sinceChristianity does not go to war. If then a
"holy war" is a war forwhich the Church takes the
responsibility there has never yet beena holy war. The phrase "holy
war" can only startle anyone whocontemplates the mystery of the
cross, the mystery that lies atthe heart of Christianity, is presented
every day at Mass and isthe cause wherefore, as St. Thomas says, the
Church forbids allclerics to take blood on their hands.[763] It remains
foreign tothe Christian vocabulary. In point of fact St. Thomas never
makesuse of it; and when he wants to characterize a war undertaken atthe instance of the Church, he is content to call it "just".[764]

The duty of the Crusaders—symbolized by the liberation of theHoly
Land, the earthly country of the God of Heaven,[765] now, itwas hoped,
to become the marches of Christendom upon the frontiersof Asia—was
really nothing less than the defence of thetemporal order of the West,
of the whole of Christendom, whosecollapse would be so damaging to the
Kingdom of God. Even whileperilously hemmed in by Islam, it had been
foolishly occupied inshedding its own blood in battles and tourneys, but
was now atlast recalled to a sense of its own living solidarity by theextraordinary moral prestige of the Papacy. The fact that at thismoment
of the millennial struggle between Asia and Europe, betweenEast and
West, the Church was ranged wholly on one side gave theWest a privileged
character and an importance not unlike that ofthe ancient Jewish people
whom no one could attack without seemingto attack the cause of the true
God. That, it is true, is but asuperficial resemblance; for whereas the
Old Testament revelationwas, by the divine law, reserved to the Jewish
people,[766] thatof the New is divinely addressed to all peoples, the
cross beingdestined to extend its arms over East and West alike. It is
truehowever that in respect of the material conditions of itsexistence
the Kingdom of God then stood in close dependence on thesocial
organization of the West. The connection between thespiritual and the
temporal was then the more evident since manybishops were also temporal
princes, and since, if they did notfight themselves, they accompanied
their people on the field ofbattle. Facts like these might easily
produce the illusion thatthe Church as such was in the midst of the
melee. But this was notso. The Church does not shed blood. The military
Crusade was thedirect work of the temporal powers of Christendom, and of
the Popeas protector of Christendom.[767]

Thus the Kingdom of God never takes up arms and never assumes theresponsibility
for blood. Mahomet, in whom Islam found its highestand purest
embodiment, having borne patiently with injuries forthirteen years,
proclaimed the principle of the holy war, promisedparadise to his
swordsmen, took part in thirty campaigns anddirected ten battles. But
Jesus, in whom the Kingdom of God foundits highest and purest
embodiment, not only directed no battlesbut offered Himself, on the
contrary, to death without evenallowing Himself to be defended by the
sword; not to condemn theuse of the sword by the temporal authorities,
as St. Paul clearlysaw, but to manifest to all eyes that his Kingdom was
not of thisworld: "If my kingdom were of this world, my servants
wouldcertainly fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews: butnow
my kingdom is not from hence" (John xviii. 36).[768]

CHAPTER VII: SECOND AND THIRD DIVISIONS OF THE PERMANENT JURISDICTION

We may now pass on to the other great divisions of thejurisdictional
power. In this Chapter I shall discuss two ofthese: first the accidental
division taken from the quality of theassistance promised by God to the
jurisdictional intervention;second, the material division, taken from
the nature of the thingsprescribed by the jurisdictional authority.

Although the great divisions of the jurisdictional power are thusmade
from different standpoints, they nevertheless partly overlapon account
of the matters they apply to. Hence it will not bepossible to keep
completely clear of repetitions.

1. The Accidental Division: The Degrees Of Jurisdictional Assistance

Without prejudice to more direct and more immediate distinctions,the
power of jurisdiction is divisible from an external,accidental but not
unimportant standpoint, by grouping thejurisdictional interventions
according to the nature of the divineaid, the degree of divine
assistance, on which they can count. Theresults of this study may help
us later on to characterize thevarious speculative and practical
pronouncements of the Church.

1. Human Hesitation And Divine Assistance

In assisting the depositaries of the power of jurisdiction, Goddoes
not seek to dispense them from effort, reflection orhesitation. He sends
them like labourers into the harvest,allowing them to make all kinds of
experiments, fortunate orotherwise, to be stored up in the memory of the
Church andcontinually to enrich it with the passing of the centuries. It
mayseem at times that He leaves her to be the sport of the winds,like
the little boat on the Lake of Tiberias, but in reality Henever ceases
to watch over her, and it is His omnipotence thatfinally determines her
line of movement through history. To adoptanother comparison, just as
the grace of predestination, withoutdestroying man's liberty or sparing
him trials, brings himinfallibly to the goal of salvation, so the grace
of divineassistance, without destroying the liberty of the
jurisdictionalpower or freeing it from the obligation of enquiry,
consultation,reflection and prayer, nevertheless directs its steps
infalliblyto the great ends that God has assigned it.

2. The Jurisdictional Power's Three Tasks, Corresponding To Different Kinds
Of Divine Assistance

What are these great ends assigned to the Church, the greatimmediate
tasks which she must carry out in this world? And in thecase of each one
of these tasks, what is the area left to thehesitation of human effort
and what the area protected by thedivine infallibility?

We may recognize three distinct tasks for the jurisdictionalpower,
all of them necessary, but not all on the same level. Theyare mutually
ordered among themselves. In the first, the divineassistance will appear
in its preeminent form; in the second andthe third, which are not
immediately divine, the assistance of theHoly Spirit will leave an
increasing-margin to human initiativeand take on a form more and more
concealed—without ever leavingthem wholly under the laws which rule
human behaviour.

3. The "Proposition" Of The Revelation: "Absolute
Assistance"

The first and highest task of the jurisdictional power is,conjointly
with the sacramental power, to manifest the verysources of evangelical
grace and truth to the world. Thejurisdictional power has to preserve
the burden of the divinerevelation intact among men, and authoritatively
to make clear itscontents as the passage of time may require. The leastinexactitude here would be a catastrophe. For it is the divinerevelation
as proposed by the Church that is the object of ourtheological faith,
that is to say of our supernatural, absolute,final and irrevocable
assent. It must therefore be defined in astrictly infallible and
irrevocable manner. That is not possiblewithout the help of the highest
existing form of the divineassistance. It does not suppress human
effort, but it divinelyconsecrates it; some what as the miracle at Cana
consecrated theefforts of the servants who had filled the urns with
water. Thedivine assistance is here infallible in the proper sense and
in anabsolute manner. By "infallible assistance in the proper
sense" weunderstand that which divinely guarantees each one of thedecisions taken by the jurisdictional power (the assistance wouldbe
infallible only in an improper sense, would in fact befallible, if it
guaranteed the exercise of the jurisdictionalpower only as a whole and
in a general way). And by "absoluteinfallible assistance" we
understand that which divinelyguarantees as irreformable the speculative
and practicalpronouncements of the jurisdictional power. It is on this
firstform of assistance that the primary message of the Church depends.It comprises all those truths that the Church has defined, whetherexpressly
as revealed or simply as infallible; and also dogmaticfacts.

4. "Protection" Of The Revelation And The Two Forms Of
"Prudential Assistance"

The second task of the jurisdictional power is still, though lessdivine,
one of the highest dignity. It consists in taking all themeasures which,
on the one hand, will give Christians secureaccess to the divine sources
of grace and truth, and, on theother, will help to bring the living
waters down into their dailylives. To feed Christ's sheep is not simply
to have authority toopen the divine pastures for them; it is also to
have authority toward off the dangers that threaten them, and direct
their steps,that is to say their interior and exterior actions, towards
thesepastures. There we have a vast field of measures taken by thecanonical
power in matters both speculative and practical, andconstituting what I
have called its secondary message. Here thequestion is no longer to
determine whether such and such a thingis, or is not, revealed,
irrevocably defined, of divineinstitution. It is to determine whether
this thing is adapted tolead minds, hearts and lives nearer to or
farther away from whatis revealed, irrevocably defined, of divine
institution. Evidentlywe are in the domain of prudential decisions. The
assistanceneeded now will not have to be "absolute", as in the
precedingcase. A relative one will suffice, guaranteeing the prudence ofthe measures decreed by the canonical power.

The more important, universal, permanent and urgent are thedecrees of
the canonical power, the more they will engage thewisdom and holiness of
the Church. The more particular,circumstantial and temporary they are,
the more they will dependon the prudence of her ministers, and the less
they will involvethe Church herself. Hence the distribution, commonly
made bytheologians, of the decisions of the canonical power into twomajor
and clearly recognizable categories—between which roomcan doubtless be
found for measures whose nature is not easilydeterminable. The first
category comprises the universaldecisions, such as the great speculative
and practical teachingsof the canonical powers, the laws of the Church,
the permanentprovisions of her Canon Law; and the second category
comprisesparticular decisions, such as legislative applications andconcrete
and detailed measures. Correlatively to these two speciesof canonical
decision we must recognize two species of relative orprudential
assistance:

a. First, a relative or prudential assistance which will be, likethe
absolute assistance, infallible in the proper sense, since itwill
divinely guarantee the prudence of each particular canonicaldecision of
general interest.

b. Second, a relative and prudential assistance which will be,properly
speaking, fallible, because it will not guarantee theprudence of each
particular canonical decision, of each concretelegislative application.
And yet this assistance could still becalled infallible, though now in
an improper sense, since theparticular decrees of the canonical power
particularize the greatteachings and laws of the Church, so that the
prudence of theirgeneral orientation will be thereby guaranteed; and
whateverignorances, errors and faults may be found in this domain—andthey are inevitable—we shall nevertheless be able to hold thesedecrees
to be beneficial on the whole, and in most cases. We maythink here of
the multitudinous pronouncements made from time totime by provincial
councils or by bishops, with a view to theproper regulation of the lives
of clergy and laity.

5. A Text Of St. Thomas

Up to this point we have recognized three kinds of assistance: (1)absolute
infallible assistance, guaranteeing the irreformabletruth of each of the
decisions of the declaratory power; (2)infallible prudential assistance,
guaranteeing the prudence ofeach of the universal decisions of the
canonical power; and (3)fallible prudential assistance (infallible only
in an impropersense), guaranteeing the beneficence of the particular
decisionsof the canonical power, but only as a whole. I think that thisdivision does not differ from that set up by St. Thomas in thesixteenth
article of Quodlibet IX. Speaking of the way on whichdivine providence
assists the jurisdictional power, he firstdistinguishes decisions on
points of divine faith, in which thejudgment of the universal Church,
that is, of the declaratorypower, cannot go astray: "Certum est
quod judicium Ecclesiaeuniversalis errare in his quae ad fidem
pertinent, impossibileest. "There we have the absolute and
infallible assistance. Nexthe distinguishes decisions bearing on
particular facts, concernedfor example with ecclesiastical goods, legal
proceedings and soforth, in which the judgment of the Church, that is,
of thecanonical power, can be led astray by false testimonies: "In
aliisvero sententiis quae ad particularia facta pertinent, ut cumagitur
de possessionibus, vel de criminibus, vel de hujusmodi, possibile est judicium
Ecclesiae errare propter falsos testes." There we have the domain of
fallible prudential assistance.Finally St. Thomas recognizes a third
type of decision, standingbetween the definitions of the faith and
particular decisions, andin which, as we may believe, the Church cannot
err even in theexercise of her canonical power: "Pie credendum est
quod nec etiamin his judicium Ecclesiae errare possit." The Church,
he says,answering difficulties raised about these intermediate
decisions,is here led by the instinct of the Holy Spirit who searches
allthings, even the deep things of God, and divine providence sees toit that she is not here misled by the fallible testimonies of men.St.
Thomas speaks here of the canonization of saints which seemedin those
days to be a matter of human or purely ecclesiasticalfaith, as is today
the beatification of a servant of God (it wasonly later, following the
detailed study of dogmatic facts,provoked by the Jansenist quarrels,
that theologians came toregard the canonization of saints as matters of
irrevocabledefinition). Thus then, according to St. Thomas, there is acategory of decisions to be held as infallible under pain of sinagainst
piety and due respect for the Church, but not directlyunder pain of sin
against the faith. There we have the domain ofinfallible prudential
assistance.

6. The "Empirical Existence" And "Biological Assistance"
Of The Church

A third task, to which corresponds a last type of assistance, alsoprudential,
although less strict than the foregoing, devolves onthe jurisdictional
power. Its first task is to set out the divinerevelation infallibly. Its
second is to bring the Christian peopleinto touch with this revelation.
Its third will be to assure thetemporal conditions of the Church's daily
existence in the midstof the world of politics and culture. If such
conditions werewholly absent the sacramental and jurisdictional powers
could nolonger be exercised, nor could the faith be propagated; and thatwould be the end of Christianity. This, as we know, is impossible.The
powers of evil will not prevail against the Church. Theconditions needed
for the exercise of the sacramental andjurisdictional powers and for the
manifestation of the faith, in aword for the biological and empirical
existence of the Church,will always be present, if not in a particular
region stillunconverted or swept by persecution, at least in other parts
ofthe world. In this sense an infallible assistance is promised theChurch.
I shall call it "biological assistance". It will be verysupple,
as might be expected. Here there is no question ofdefining, or even
protecting, a revealed deposit; but only ofassuring the temporal
conditions of the Church's spiritual life.Many and various expedients
will be possible at all times. Anyexact estimate of their value would
require the widest knowledge,not only of the present, but of the whole
course of history in sofar as it affects the Kingdom of God. One would
have to divine thewhole mystery of the growth of things in time; even to
know howthe divine omnipotence makes use of our errors, our sins, andevery other kind of evil. All that is quite beyond us, and herethe
prudence of the canonical power will always be uncertain. "Chesara
domani?. . . Non sappiamo," said Pius XI, speaking of theresults of
the Lateran Treaty. The divine assistance promised theChurch is here
infallible only to assure her physical existence inthe world; it spares
her neither experiment nor hesitation, noreven governmental mistakes;
these last it may even turn to goodaccount. We can thus understand the
freedom with which historianslike Pastor, who has not lacked pontifical
approbation, are ableto pass judgment retrospectively on the fortunate
or unfortunatecharacter of the political action of the Popes.

a. "If we look only at the persons of those who govern the Church"
says St. Thomas (Quodlibet IX, a. 16), "we should say that theycould
err in their decisions, but if we consider the divineprovidence which,
according to His promise, rules the Churchthrough the Holy Spirit",
we must judge otherwise. From this wesee that the assistance that
sustains the Church in the world doesnot flow from any permanent or
habitual principle inherent in theChurch. It is due to extrinsic
providential aid, to a divineinflux. However, it is more than a mere
inerrancy of fact; it isan inerrancy of right, for the Church can, in
all circumstances,count on God's special help.

b. It is easy to distinguish assistance from other exceptionalforms
of divine aid, for example from the prophetic graces grantedto the
Apostles, such as revelation or inspiration whether oral orscriptural.
By revelation the Holy Spirit made the mysteries ofthe new faith known
to the Apostles. By inspiration the HolySpirit led the Apostles to
express it infallibly whether viva voce(hence Tradition) or in writing
(hence the Scriptures). Byassistance the Holy Spirit does not manifest
any new mysteries offaith for the Church to hand on to the world; He
sustains hersupernaturally in the fulfilment of her mission.

When revelation, inspiration and assistance are thus compared andopposed
we are thinking as a general rule of the absolute andinfallible
assistance which enables the Church to preserve therevealed deposit
without error, to define its meaning irrevocably,and to explain its
content.[769] We are therefore consideringassistance in its highest
form. However, the jurisdictional powerhas other secondary tasks; and it
is divinely assisted in thefulfilment of each. The consequence is that
the notion of divineassistance must be regarded as analogical. The
absolute andinfallible assistance will be its highest form, the highestanalogue. Then comes infallible prudential assistance, and thenfallible
prudential assistance. Finally we have biologicalassistance, the lowest
analogue of all.

c. It would be an error to think that the divine assistanceamounts to
no more than a negative aid. The best theologians holdthat divine
providence sustains the Church rather by positivegraces of light and
strength than by negative interventionsconfined to bringing about the
failure of ill-conceived measuresand reducing their authors to
impotence.[770] "The privilege ofinerrancy or of infallibility
guaranteed to the magisterium of theChurch" writes Pere Clerissac,
"cannot then be understood in apurely negative and passive sense
which would represent God asonly intervening just in time to prevent a
mishap. The magisteriumof the Church proceeds by positive judgments
which imply aprofound intelligence, an unlimited discernment. Taken
simply inthemselves, the formulae in which the Church sets the diamond
ofdogma are wonderful works. How much more precious is the judgmentwhich
they contain! This is the lofty form of prophecy which makesthe Church a
contemplative of the highest order."[771] Theilluminations of the
Holy Spirit may be called on to sustain thejurisdictional power even in
its lesser tasks. For example, thesummoning of Christian princes to a
Crusade would appear to be anoccasion for simple biological assistance.
And yet we know thatSt. Pius V was supernaturally made aware of the
victory of Lepantolong in advance.[772]

8. Definition Of Divine Assistance

I shall define the divine assistance solely by its formalcharacteristics
and say that it is an exterior aid, a presentprovidential influx,
sustaining the jurisdictional power in itstriple mission (1) to preserve
and expound the revealed deposit,(2) to defend it by prudential measures
(3) to assure theconditions of its biological existence. If one had to
enumeratethe wealth of resources it brings into play it would be
necessaryto accord the highest rank to the living faith of the Church
andthe contemplative gifts of knowledge and of wisdom which dwell inher
in a constant and permanent manner and make her, in thisworld, the abode
in which God hides Himself among men.

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II. THE MATERIAL DIVISION: SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL MESSAGE OF THE CHURCH

The material division of the jurisdictional power does not set outto
make two really distinct powers of it, one subordinate to theother. It
is simply a division of convenience, and can be effectedin two ways.

We can distinguish between pronouncements of the doctrinal order,whether
speculative or practical, whether concerning "faith" or"morals";
and pronouncements of the disciplinary order, relatingto acts chiefly
exterior. Hence the division into magisterial anddisciplinary power.

Again, we can distinguish between pronouncements of thespeculative
order, and those of the practical or moral order,comprising both general
principles and disciplinary applications.Hence the division into power
to announce speculative truth, andpower to announce practical truth.

If we adopt this second mode of division it will be possible todetail,
complete, and illustrate what has been said of thejurisdictional power.

1. The Power To Announce Speculative Truth

I shall first discuss truths guaranteed absolutely (those definedby
the declaratory power), and then truths guaranteed prudentially(and
taught by the canonical power).

A. Truths Guaranteed Absolutely

Under this heading we must include—while insisting on theirbasic
homogeneity [773]—the three first degrees of Catholicdoctrine, that is
to say: a. the explicit revelation as deliveredto the Apostles; b.
dogma, or truths defined as revealed; c. truths defined in an absolute or
irrevocable manner, though notdefined as revealed.

1. The Explicit Revelation

"I have called you friends; because all things whatsoever I haveheard
of my Father, I have made known to you. . . When the Spiritof truth is
come, he will teach you all truth..." (John xv. 15;xvi. 13). The
extra-ordinary light bestowed on the Apostles asfounders of the Church
enabled them to embrace, in the simplicityof a unique glance and in an
eminent manner, the whole revelationof the New Law. What they have
handed down to us, the explicitlyrevealed deposit, contains, either
explicitly or implicitly, allthe truths of the Christian faith.
Henceforth we are not to expectany further revelation of the Spirit
inaugurating some new age ofthe world, or any sort of advance on
Christianity. The NewTestament, the revealed deposit as it has come to
us from theApostles orally (Tradition) or in writing (Scripture), is
final;it will be valid till the end of the world. The Church herself hasno authority to modify it. Her mission is simply to keep itintact:
"O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trustavoiding the
profane novelties of words and oppositions ofknowledge falsely so
called. . . Hold the form of sound wordswhich thou hast heard of me, in
faith and in the love which is inChrist Jesus; keep the good thing
committed to thy trust by theHoly Ghost who dwelleth in us" (1 Tim.
vi. 20; 2 Tim. i. 13).Similarly, at the end of the Apocalypse it is
written: "If anyman shall add to these things, God shall add unto
him the plagueswritten in this book."[774] That is why Pius X
condemned themodernist error affirming that revelation, the object of
Catholicfaith, was not closed at the death of the last Apostle.[775] Thefirst degree of Catholic doctrine comprises therefore the revealedtruths,
prior to all elaboration and in the very state in whichthey were handed
on by the Apostles whether orally (Tradition) orin writing (Scripture).
This first degree is the starting-point ofall dogmatic progress.

2. Dogmas, Or Truths Defined As Revealed

But if the revealed deposit cannot increase through newrevelations,
its content at least may be developed indefinitely.Indeed, like every
other living thing, its identity is only savedby development.[776] The
Church therefore has a mission todevelop and make explicit the deposit
entrusted to her, she islike the perfect scribe whom Jesus compares to a
householderbringing out of his treasure new things and old (Matt. xiii.
52).And if to preserve a divine deposit and unerringly unfold it needsdivine assistance, Jesus will not fail to provide it: "Behold I amwith
you all days, even to the consummation of the world. "Allthis is
simply scriptural, and the Vatican Council sums it up whenmarking the
role of the dogmatic magisterium of the Church: "Thedoctrine of
faith which God has revealed has been committed as adivine deposit to
the Spouse of Christ to be faithfully kept andinfallibly declared",
to be "reverently guarded and faithfullyexpounded" .[777]

The Church has thus authority and assistance to guard the revealeddeposit.
The task is superhuman. For it has to be preserved not byhiding it under
a vessel but in the act of proclaiming it from theroof tops, and what
has to be kept intact and free from alterationis not merely the outward
verbal expression but the inwardsupernatural meaning. The Church is a
living teacher repeating theGospel message to successive generations,
either using the verysame inspired words (e. g. "the Word was made
flesh") orequivalent words (e. g. "Jesus is true God and true
man").

But the Church would be incapable of preserving the content of thedivine
revelation like a thing alive, not fixed and immobilized,if she had not
power to declare, to manifest, to define itsmeaning, so as to be able to
answer the new questions that arebound to crop up continually as time
goes on. Hence a developmentof the revealed deposit, a dogmatic
progress, effected either byway of speculative unfolding, or by way of
concrete application tocontingent facts.

First, by way of unfolding. If, for example, it is explicitlyrevealed
that Jesus is true God and true Man, then it is alreadyrevealed, but
this time implicitly, that in Jesus there are twointellects, one divine
and one human, and two wills, one divineand one human. If it is revealed
that Christ declared that what Heoffered under the appearance of bread
was His Body, then it isalready revealed, but implicitly, that in that
upper room theretook place an extraordinary change of one substance into
another,a trans-substantiation. The Church, divinely assisted, cantherefore
define as revealed by the Gospel itself, that in Jesusare two
intelligences and two wills; that the real presence ofChrist in the
Eucharist presupposes transubstantiation. And thisshe has done; in the
first case at the third Councilsubstantiation. And this she has done; in
the first case at thethird Council of Constantinople, and in the second
at the Councilof Trent. The progress of the revealed deposit is here
effected bysimple unfolding, by passing from a truth revealed implicitly
and"in itself", to the same truth revealed explicitly and
"for us".

The development of the revealed deposit may be effected once moreby
its application to contingent realities. For if a universalproposition
is explicitly revealed, then all the particularpropositions that it
contains will be thereby implicitly revealed.For example, it is
explicitly revealed that the Church isinfallible, in other words that
every Council that is trulyoecumenical, that is, truly representative of
the Church, isinfallible; and thereby it is revealed in advance that theCouncils of Nicaea, Trent, the Vatican, etc., if oecumenical, areinfallible.
It is revealed explicitly that the Church hassufficient light to teach
the evangelical doctrine, in other wordsto discern what is conformable
or contrary to the evangelicaldoctrine; and thereby it is revealed in
advance that the Canon ofthe Mass, if solemnly guaranteed by the Church,
is free fromerror. It is explicitly revealed that Peter is to feed the
sheepof Christ till the end of the world, in other words that theauthentic
successor of Peter has supreme jurisdiction over theChristian people;
and thereby it is revealed in advance that PiusXI, if an authentic
successor of Peter, has supreme jurisdictionover the Christian people.
Once the condition laid down in thesethree examples is verified—not in
a fallible manner as would bethe result of a merely human enquiry, but
infallibly as in thecase of a declaration (implicit or explicit) of the
Churchdivinely assisted to recognize the points that involve her wholedestiny—the revealed universal proposition will be applied to aparticular
case, and the judgments of fact we have mentioned willappear, with
absolute certainty, as implicitly revealed. They willbecome credible
with divine faith; they will eminently deserve thename of dogmatic
facts;[778] they can be solemnly defined assuch; as it is defined for
example that the Canon of the Mass isfree from error.[779]

It falls therefore within the competence of the Church firstly topropose,
as object of divine faith, the truths explicitly revealedin the oral or
written deposit, as handed down to us by theApostles and Evangelists
(revealed deposit). She is competentsecondly to propose, as object of
divine faith, truths which areincluded in the foregoing, but which,
although from the outsetrevealed implicitly and "in
themselves", were not yet revealedexplicitly and "for us"
(dogmatic definitions). That is not all:she is competent, thirdly, to
propose certain propositions to thefaithful the truth of which she
absolutely guarantees, but withoutexpressly putting them forward as
revealed or as objects of divinefaith (infallible irrevocable
definitions, but not put forward asdogmatic).

3. Truths Defined Irrevocably, But Not As Revealed

a. Accord of Theologians

These last pronouncements bear either on doctrines which are inlogically
necessary connection with a truth of faith, or on factsin morally
necessary connection with the primary end of theChurch, which is to
preserve and explain the revealed deposit;[780] doctrines and facts so closely
related to the revealeddeposit that their denial would at once imperil
the deposititself. Thus among these irrevocable pronouncements are to beincluded certain condemnations of doctrinal propositions which,though
not heretical or directly contrary to the faith, areerroneous, bordering
on heresy, and indirectly against the faith.Let us consider as examples
picked out at haphazard (and on my ownresponsibility, since they are not
expressly said to representirrevocable decisions), the following
condemned propositions: "Theprince or the bishop loses his power as
soon as he falls into sin" (Wycliff, Hus); "Man, after the fall, was
at first abandoned tohis own human resources so that he might learn to
desiresupernatural aid" (Synod of Pistoia); "Indulgences
liberate onlyfrom the canonical penance imposed by the Church, not from
thetemporal punishment of sin imposed by divine justice" (Synod ofPistoia). A theologian would have no difficulty in showing thatsuch
errors would tend to the destruction of the revealed deposit:the first
misconceives the nature of the spiritual jurisdiction ofthe Church and
of the temporal jurisdiction of society; the secondthe relations between
nature and grace; and the third the promise:"Whatsoever you shall
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

Similarly, certain pronouncements concerning contingent facts canbe
infallibly and irrevocably defined by the Church. She hasinfallibly
declared that the five condemned propositions ofJansenius really figure
in his book in an heretical sense; in thecanonization of a saint she
pronounces infallibly on the holinessof a human life; in giving final
approval to a religious order shedeclares that the new Rule, in virtue
of its general tenor—notmerely on account of the three vows—is
calculated to lead soulsto perfection; she can declare infallibly that
such and such atreaty is unjust or that a given contract is usurious orsimoniacal. And indeed, if the whole Church could be deceived inappreciating
how the burden of a book—Jansenius', for instance—stands to that of
the Gospel, she could no longer teach meninfallibly the doctrine of
Christ;[781] if she could go astray inappreciating a life—St. Teresa's
for instance—or a monasticrule, or a treaty or a contract, as related
to the Gospelteachings, she would no longer be an infallible guide to
sanctity,which is nevertheless the ideal of Christian life.

Theologians are unanimous in recognizing the infallibility of theChurch
in the above-mentioned matters. Many make it itself a pointof faith. At
the Vatican Council a canon had even been preparedwith a view to the
solemn definition as an article of faith of thedoctrine that the
infallibility of the Church is not "restrictedsimply to what is
contained in the divine revelation", but"extends also to other
truths necessarily required to ensure theintegrity of the revealed
deposit".[782]

b. Two Different Theological Explanations

Here however the differences begin. Do these truths, absolutelydefined
because "necessarily required "for the preservation ofthe
revealed deposit, form a part of that revealed deposit, or arethey
outside it? They express, as we have said, doctrine that isin logically
necessary connection with a truth of the faith, andfacts in morally
necessary connection with the primary ends of theChurch. How are we to
understand this necessary connection? Theessential properties of a
circle are involved in its definition; they are not really but only conceptually
distinct from it, andyou cannot destroy the first without destroying the
second. Thatis a case of intrinsic or metaphysical connection. But thephysical properties of a body, an actual radiation for example,while
bound up with the nature of the body, are really distinctfrom the body
and could even be separated from it by a miracle.That is extrinsic or
physical connection. Under which head fallthose truths that are
irrevocably defined by the Church—underintrinsic or extrinsic
connection?

I think that all truths defined as irreformable bear upon what isimplicitly
but really revealed. They are truly—and this whetherthey announce a
doctrine or a fact—an integrant part of theprimitive deposit, not
simply an adjunct, something annexed to it.[783] They were included in it from
the outset as the propertiesof a circle are included in its definition,
but this inclusionremained hidden or at least was not infallibly made
manifest.[784] In teaching them as absolutely true the Church, of course,does
not bring about their inclusion in the deposit; she merelyuses her
declaratory power to indicate infallibly that they arethere. Hence
truths of this third category will become objects ofdivine faith. Thus
then we regard these truths as emanating fromthe declaratory power and
as objects of divine faith. It is notyet of divine faith that they are
of divine faith. This is simplythe conviction of certain theologians,
here followed. But this isnot to suggest that they are of divine faith
for some of these andnot for the others. Resuming a distinction used
long ago by Johnof St. Thomas [785] to get over a like difficulty, I
shallmaintain as to truths of the third degree, that although alltheologians
do not receive them as of divine faith in theory andreflexively
("Speculative et in actu signato"), all of themnevertheless,
even when they express themselves on this point in amanner that seems to
us defective, receive them as of divine faithin fact and spontaneously
("practice et in actu exercito").

c. The Consequence of this Divergence of Opinion

However well founded may be the opinion here followed, it does notinfallibly
close the controversy. Some theologians may very wellcontinue to think
that pronouncements of the third degree are notan integrant part of the
primitive deposit, that they are simplyannexed to it from without, and
they are not within the field ofrevelation. In that case they could not
possibly fall under thedeclaratory power. Could they emanate from the
ordinary canonicalpower, whose decisions are guaranteed only
prudentially? No; theywould have to be attributed to a privileged
canonical power,enjoying an absolutely infallible assistance. Thus they
would forma special category of their own. For, on the one hand, they
wouldbe irrevocably defined, like the truths of divine faith; and onthe
other, they would have to be believed on the created authorityof the
(Church, and not, as are truths of divine faith, on theuncreated
authority of God. Therefore, between the intellectualassent, based on
the authority of God with its object determinedirrevocably (divine
faith), and the intellectual assent based onthe canonical authority of
the Church with its object determinedprudentially (moral obedience,
religious assent, ecclesiasticalfaith—"assensus religiosus
"as Franzelin well puts it) weshould have to admit the existence of
an intermediate intellectualassent, based on the canonical authority of
the Church, with itsobject nevertheless determined irrevocably. It was
in thesixteenth century that this intermediate assent began to come intovogue—along with the intermediate jurisdictional power itpresupposes—it
was in the seventeenth century that it was giventhe name of
"ecclesiastical faith" (but with a very differentmeaning from
that in which we take it), and it was in thenineteenth that its idea was
generalized.[786]

4. In Proposing These Three Classes Of Truths The Authority Of The Church
Only Conditions Faith And Its Object; It Is Not Its Basis

In rejecting ecclesiastical faith thus understood, I maintain thattruths
of the three first degrees are of divine faith. To believewith divine
faith is unreservedly to submit one's mind to Him whosaid "I am the
Truth"; it is to accept what He says as indubitablytrue however
difficult it may seem to us. Now, He has sent theChurch into the world
to define the precise meaning of what Hewould have us believe. The
infinite Truth, claiming the assent ofour intelligence, is thus the
foundation of our faith; and theChurch, sent to teach the nations and to
preserve without errorthe meaning of the truths to be believed, is the
condition of ourfaith. As regards the truths of these three first
categories wecan see exactly in what consists the jurisdictional power
of theChurch: it does not provide the basis for, but conditions, theinfallible
assent of faith. And nevertheless this is the highestfunction given it
to attain; here it enters into the world ofinfallibility and there is no
longer anything in its owninitiative which is not absorbed into the
divine assistance; thetotal responsibility for what is thus taught is
assumed by Christ.In dealing with the power of order I have maintained
that it ispurely instrumental, that it is a pure transmitter, and that
itseffects are therefore stamped with the likeness not of theinstrument,
the transmission, but of the holiness of the principalCause, whose power
knows no bounds: it is Christ Himself, true Godand true Man, who,
through His ministers, baptizes, removes thesoul's stains, changes the
bread and wine into His Body and Blood—so that the power of order, in
the line of its efficacy, is bynature infallible, and no question of a
special assistance neededto guarantee it even so much as arises. It is
otherwise, as wehave noted, with the power of jurisdiction, which
proposes thingsto be believed and done, not in the manner of a pure
instrument,but in that of a true second cause enjoying a free
initiative; sothat the question of divine assistance and of its limits
does infact arise. When this assistance is absolutely infallible, as inthe case of truths belonging to the three first categories, theChurch's
power of jurisdiction is raised, so to speak, to thelevel of the power
of order; all that up to then was humaninitiative is now directly
ratified, authenticated and consecratedby God, reabsorbed in a way into
the divine light. And just as itis the virtue of Christ, without
attenuation or admixture, which,through the seven sacraments, sanctifies
the world; so it is thelight of Christ, without attenuation or
admixture, which, throughthe magisterium, when infallibly assisted,
enlightens the world.It remains that the sacramental power intervenes
always as aninstrument, as an intermediate suppositum, to communicate
graceand the infused virtues; whereas the absolutely infalliblemagisterium,
although it acts as a true second cause, intervenesonly as a pure
condition so as to present the first Truth, itsformal object, to the
theological virtue of faith, without anyintermediate suppositum.

B. The Secondary Speculative Message: Truths Guaranteed Prudentially

Two conditions are required in order that a truth, whetherrepresenting
a doctrine or a fact, shall be an object of divinefaith. First, it must
be really included in the revealed deposit,and in addition to this it
must be proposed absolutely andirreformably by the Church. But there is
a vast field of truthslacking the second or even the first of these
conditions, and yet so closely connected with the truths of the faith that humanthought cannot refuse them without the more or less immediate andmore
or less grave danger of misappreciating the truths of thefaith itself.
There then is a new class of truths. They are not ofdivine faith. They
represent the fourth degree of Catholicdoctrine.

1. These Truths Of Two Kinds: Included Or Annexed

1. The first are included in the revealed deposit, but have notyet
been irreformably defined.

Examples may be found in any and every theological conclusion—if, that is
to say, the content of a genuine theologicalconclusion is to be regarded
as homogeneous and identical "quoadse" with the revealed
datum, and distinct from it onlyconceptually, "quoad
nos".[787] In the measure in which they aretaught by the best and
most enlightened servants of the Church, orreceived by the Christian
sense of the faithful, these theologicalconclusions are clothed with a
prudential authority which, withoutever becoming equivalent to an
irreformable definition, confirmsthe correctness of the deductive
process that gave them birth,brings them to the notice of our filial
piety, and makes themstill more worthy of our acceptance. Occasionally
the RomanCongregations may intervene to declare in some more official
waythe imprudence of rejecting some one or other of them. Thus adecree
of the Holy Office of the 5th June 1918, condemned asunsafe, and
therefore as imprudent, the doctrine that hesitates torecognize that
Christ, in the course of His mortal life, had allthe knowledge of the
blessed in His soul, was ignorant of nothing,knew from the beginning in
the Word all things past, present andfuture, and possessed a knowledge
that was not limited butuniversal.[788] In pronouncing on the prudence
or imprudence ofteaching a doctrine, in view of the need for preserving
therevealed deposit—clearly a matter of practical or prudentialtruth—the
jurisdictional power does not yet intend to define orcondemn irrevocably
the speculative content of this doctrine; butit is also clear that it is
not here guided by considerations ofmere expediency, that it intends to
approve as prudent what isreally true and conformable to the revealed
deposit, and toreprove as imprudent what is really false and contrary to
thedeposit; and, in a word, it does not intend to confine itself to apurely exterior and disciplinary measure, but to pass amagisterial
judgment. Hence the genuinely speculative andintrinsic value of these
decrees, although they are notirreformable.

Turning from the order of doctrine to that of facts, we may citeas an
example of those truths which, though not yet defined, mayone day be so,
the judgment passed on a servant of God in theprocess of his
beatification. It is not a definitive judgment onhis sanctity; it
amounts directly to no more than a permission topay him a cultus. When
the Church grants this practicalpermission, she is, in the view of the
best theologians,infallible, "errare practice non potest".
This means that at themoment things appear in such a light that she
certainly does notsin against prudence. That the person in question is
in heavenhowever, and definitively worthy of cultus is, no doubt,
alreadycertain, but only with a prudential and reformable certitude, notyet absolutely and irrevocably.[789] This certitude is muchgreater
than that which an historian obtains by purely scientificresearch.

2. Some truths belonging to this fourth category are not evenincluded
in the revealed deposit, but are connected with it moreor less loosely.

Thus, in the doctrinal order, "the philosophy of St. Thomas is nota
dogma; the Church can define as a truth de fide only what iscontained at
least implicitly, in the divine deposit ofrevelation. Any particular
truth professed by the Thomistphilosophy may very well be so defined one
day (if the Churchconsiders that it was contained in the deposit of
faith, and caseshave in fact already arisen)—but never the whole
philosophy,the whole corpus of Thomist doctrine". And yet the
Church "ordersher masters to teach the philosophy of St. Thomas; by
that veryfact she recommends the faithful to adhere to it, she throws
everypossible light on that philosophy, makes use of every kind ofsignal,
cries out: there you will find the running waters ! Sheexercises no
compulsion, forces nobody to go".[790] Such arecommendation sets up
a presumption in favour of the truth of theThomist philosophy, which is,
for the faithful, of great weight.

In the order of facts numerous assertions concerning theauthenticity
of miracles, of private revelations, of apparitions,or of the relics of
canonized saints, can be put into this fourthcategory.[791]

2. The Existence Of A Prudential Authority

That the doctrinal magisterium, over and above its primarymission,
which is to define certain truths with absolute authorityand
irrevocably, has a secondary mission, which is to teach othertruths with
a prudential authority and not irrevocably, is a pointof doctrine that
is certain.

In the treatise De Locis Theologicis, theologians unanimouslydistinguish
on the one hand those organs by which the magisteriumcan, when it acts
"suprema intensione" (Franzelin's term), speakwith absolute
authority and irrevocably—the Sovereign Pontiffteaching alone (solemn
magisterium not communicable to the RomanCongregations), the Sovereign
Pontiff teaching conjointly with thebishops assembled in General Council
(solemn magisterium), theSovereign Pontiff teaching conjointly with the
bishops dispersedthrough the world (ordinary magisterium)—and, on the
otherhand, the organs by which the magisterium can speak only with aprudential
authority and in a non-definitive way—and here wehave either the Roman
Congregations, or the Fathers, Doctors andtheologians in the measure in
which they have the confidence ofthe Church, since it is from her that
they have their authority.[792] Hence the division of theological sources or
organs that setout the revealed deposit into absolute or decisive on the
onehand, and "probable "or claiming our assent on the other.

To come down to detail, the authority of doctrinal decisions putout
by the canonical power has been the subject of expressdeclarations. In
the apostolic letter Tuas Libenter addressed onthe 21st December 1863 to
the Archbishop of Munich, Pius IX drewattention to the duty of (Catholic
scholars to recognize both theteaching of the pontifical congregations
and the common teachingof theologians: "It is not enough for
Catholic scholars to acceptand venerate the dogmas of the Church, they
ought further tosubmit themselves both to the doctrinal decisions of thepontifical congregations, and to points of doctrine which bycommon
and constant consent are held in the Church to be truthsand theological
conclusions so certain that the contrary opinions,although they cannot
be qualified as heretical, yet deserve someother note of theological
censure."[793] As Franzelin remarks,there is question here not of
doctrinal censures formulated in anirrevocable judgment of the Church
and to be believed as of divinefaith,[794] but of common and constant
theological truths whichall Catholics should gladly receive. The Vatican
Council, in itsturn, proclaimed at the end of the constitution Dei
Filius, theauthority of all the decisions of the Holy See: "Since
to avoidheretical perversion we must be careful to turn our backs onerrors
that more or less approximate to it, we draw attention tothe duty that
lies upon all to observe also the constitutions anddecrees by which
those nefarious doctrines, not expresslymentioned here, have been
proscribed and condemned by the HolySee."[795] The whole of this
passage is reproduced in the Codeof Canon Law (can. 1324). Here we might
cite also the seventh andeighth propositions condemned by the decree
Lamentabili of the 3rdJuly 1907: "The Church, when condemning
errors, cannot ask thefaithful to give an interior assent to the
judgment passed"; "Those who take no notice of condemnations put out
by the SacredCongregation of the Index, or by the other Roman
Congregations,are to be held to be guiltless of all fault"[796];
there is alsothe passage in the Motu Proprio of the 18th November of the
sameyear, in which Pius X declares that "all, without exception,
arebound in conscience to obey the doctrinal decisions of thepontifical
Biblical Commission, both those already issued andthose to be issued, in
the same way as they are bound to obey thedecrees of the Sacred
Congregations approved by the SovereignPontiff".[797]

3. Prudential Authority The Basis Of Religious Assent

Thus then, God has not left us without guidance in the immenseaccumulation
of ideas bearing on the speculative life, on private,economic and
political morality, on artistic activity, in thespheres into which the
full light of revelation has not yetdescended and in which nevertheless
convictions are formed,syntheses elaborated and decisive choices taken
which may eitheropen or obstruct the road to the fullness of the faith.
He helpsus through His Church to whom He entrusts a new mission, no
longerthat of irrevocably defining the data of the faith, but that ofprudentially marking the truths which point towards the things offaith
or the errors that turn men away from it, that of ratifyingor rejecting
certain suggestions of the theologians and thephilosophers and certain
beliefs of popular piety.

In this sphere the Church acts no longer in virtue of herdeclaratory
power, as a simple messenger or mandatory forutterances of divine
origin. She acts now in virtue of hercanonical power, as promulgator of
what can fittingly be taughtand believed if the minds of the faithful
are to be kept from thedangers that threaten their faith. It is this
magisterialauthority of the canonical power that Franzelin proposes to
callan "authority of universal ecclesiastical
providence".[798]

In these matters the Church no longer acts merely to conditionassent,
as in matters of divine faith; she is herself theimmediate basis of an
assent (the mediate basis being God, whorules the Church) which on this
account may be calledecclesiastical obedience, ecclesiastical faith,
religious assent,pious assent.[799]

It is our duty to recognize divine authority not only in itself,but
also in the teachers it has pleased it to give us. He whom webow before
is, in both cases, God, although the submission is not,in both cases, of
the same species. Obedience based immediately onthe uncreated Truth is
of the theological order; that given to themaster appointed us is of the
moral order. And this obedience willbe so much the better as the
magisterium is the higher and themore sacred. If the magisterium be
natural, the obedience will be,in itself, natural. If the magisterium is
realized analogicallyand supernaturally, the virtue of docility and
obedience will berealized analogically and supernaturally. Consequently,
since themagisterium of the canonical power is supernatural, theintellectual
and interior obedience due to it in consciencebelongs also to the
supernatural order. Ecclesiastical faith, thusunderstood, is a
supernatural moral virtue, a supernaturalobedience.

4. Two Forms Of Prudential Assistance: Infallible And Fallible

While the declaratory magisterium is assisted in an absolutemanner,
the simply canonical magisterium is assisted only in arelative or
prudential manner. This latter magisterium pronouncesdirectly on the
prudential character of a teaching, of aproposition. What it says is
that it is prudent to adhereinteriorly to such and such a teaching and
rash to refuse to doso. And undoubtedly an interior adhesion to a
teaching will appearto be prudent only when this teaching seems to be
intrinsicallytrue; and there are strong reasons why a teaching which has
onceseemed to be true to a providentially assisted magisterium shouldcontinue to seem true afterwards and always. Nevertheless, thespeculative
content of this teaching remains reformable. It isguaranteed only in a
practical and prudential manner, by way ofconsequence and indirectly.

How are we to understand the assistance, divine, but relative andprudential,
promised to the magisterium when it teaches truths ofthe fourth degree?
Is it infallible, and are we sure that themagisterium will never
pronounce without prudence in any one ofits teachings? Or will it be, on
the contrary, fallible, and canthe magisterium sin against prudence in a
given case? Eithersituation can arise.

If it is a question of teachings universally and constantlyproposed
to the faithful and often recalled by the Church; if,more generally, it
is a case of teachings in which the Churchintends fully to engage the
prudential authority she has to feedChrist's sheep, to determine what is
apt to bring minds nearer toor turn them away from the faith, we shall
not hesitate to saythat the magisterium proposes them in virtue of a
practicalprudential assistance which is truly and properly infallible,
sothat we can be sure of the prudence of each of these teachings,and
in consequence practically sure of their intrinsic andspeculative truth.
To adopt a phrase of Franzelin's, if there isas yet no infallible
irrevocable truth, "veritas infallibilis",there is
nevertheless an infallible assurance, "infallibilissecuritas".
Such, for example, are the prescriptions recallingthat Sacred Scripture
should be interpreted in the light of theFathers and Doctors; the law of
the Code ordering professors inseminaries to teach philosophy and
theology conformably with themethod, doctrine and principles of the
Angelic Doctor; thejudgment by which a servant of God is declared
blessed, etc.[800]

If, on the contrary, there is question of teachings proposedwithout
this universality and this constancy, of solutions ofrecent problems not
yet generalized by the Church, in which shedoes not intend fully to
engage her prudential authority, then weshall say that the magisterium
proposes them only in a falliblemanner.[801] If there is infallible
assistance here, it isinfallible only in the improper sense, and that
means that themagisterium is assisted, not for each determinate case,singillatim, divisive, but for the generality of cases, incommune,
collective. It is certain, for example, that thedecisions of the
Biblical Commission, taken as a whole, defend theauthentic meaning of
the Bible and its divine character, withassured prudence.

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EXCURSUS VI: THE CONDEMNATION OF GALILEO

(1) All theologians agree that the acts of the doctrinalmagisterium
are divided into two major categories.

The first comprises those acts by which the magisterium intends topronounce
directly and irrevocably on the truth or the falsity ofa doctrinal
assertion. Then the proposition defined is absolutelytrue; and the
proposition condemned as erroneous, or heretical, isabsolutely erroneous
or heretical. Such magisterial acts supposethe intervention of an
absolute divine assistance.

The second category comprises acts by which the magisteriumintends to
pronounce directly only on the safety and the prudence,or on the danger
and imprudence, of such and such a doctrine asprofessed by a believer.
The meaning of the magisterialintervention is now this: In the given
circumstances, in thepresent state of science, it is prudent and safe to
regard suchand such a proposition as true, comformable to Holy
Scripture, andso forth. Or, it is prudent and safe to regard this
proposition asrash, erroneous, contrary to Holy Scripture and so forth.
Suchmagisterial acts suppose the intervention of a divine assistancesolely
relative or prudential (cf. L. Choupin, S. J., Valeur desdecisions
doctrinales et disciplinaires du saint siege, Paris1913, p. 84).

But, it must be added, this category of prudential acts mustitself be
subdivided:

Either, the magisterium intends to engage its authority fully, forexample
in proposing the great teachings approved in the Church ina universal
and constant manner; it will speak, as Franzelin says,with
"infallible assurance". It will teach, without ever sinningagainst
prudence, that it is safe and prudent to regard such aproposition as
true, in conformity with Scripture, and suchanother as false, or
contrary to Scripture. In this it will besupported by an infallible
prudential assistance.

Or, the magisterium will not intend fully to engage its authority,for
example when it proposes teachings that are not approved inthe Church in
a manner so universal and so constant. It willremain fallible, and will
be infallible only in the impropersense, that is to say that it will
teach, without sinning againstprudence in the majority of cases, that it
is safe and prudent toregard such and such a proposition as true and in
conformity withScripture, or as false and contrary to Scripture; but it
can sinagainst prudence, and occasionally it will do so, for it is nowsupported only by a fallible prudential assistance.

So there are three sorts of teachings: the first, infalliblyguaranteeing
the absolute and irreformable truth of a doctrinalproposition; the
second, infallibly guaranteeing the safety andprudence of a doctrinal
proposition; the third, falliblyguaranteeing the safety and prudence of
a doctrinal proposition.To these three kinds of teachings correspond the
three species ofdivine assistance promised to the magisterium: absoluteassistance, infallible prudential assistance, and fallibleprudential
assistance.

(2) If it is to be held to be incompatible with the infallibilityof
the Roman Pontiff as solemnly defined at the Vatican Council,the
condemnation of Galileo will have to be presented as an act ofthe
declaratory power, as a sentence pronounced directly by thePope in an
absolute and irreformable manner.

In point of fact it came only from the canonical and prudentialpower.
Was it even fully engaged? If so, we should be bound toprove that the
Roman Congregations then committed no imprudence,and that they were
right in denying, not indeed the truth but theopportuneness of the
heliocentric thesis. I shall not attempt toprove this. I agree, on the
contrary, that the condemnation ofGalileo was imprudent.

It belonged therefore to the class of fallible prudential decrees,decrees
that do not fully engage the authority of the magisterium.This much was
clear from the outset. For the decrees of the RomanCongregations can be
approved by the Pope in two ways. First, inthe common way, in forma
communi: they are then undoubtedly actsof the Holy See, of which the
Congregations are an organ, butemanating directly from the Congregations
and issued in theirname. Secondly, in a special manner, in forma
specifica, when thePope expressly adopts these decrees and issues them
in his ownname, using for example the following formulas: "By our
ownauthority, of our certain knowledge, in the plenitude of ourapostolic
power. "These last decrees are the only ones in whichany question
of prudential infallibility arises (absoluteinfallibility cannot come in
question save when the Pope manifestshis will to settle a question by
definitive irrevocable sentence).Now, the decrees against Galileo,
issued in 1616 by theCongregation of the Index, and in 1633 by the
Congregation of theInquisition, were approved only in a general way, in
formacommuni. The assistance to which they can lay claim was thereforeonly fallible (cf. L. Choupin, op. cit., pp. 70, 79, 166, 173).

(3) Let us briefly recall the facts. The Congregation of the Indexprepared,
in February 1616, a decree declaring the heliocentricthesis to be
formally heretical. Then on the 25th February, adisciplinary measure was
taken against Galileo: he was summoned toBellarmine's apartment and
notified in the name of the Pope andthe Congregation of the Inquisition,
that since his astronomicaldoctrine appeared to be formally heretical,
he was not to maintainit and treat of it in any way, either viva voce or
in writing.Galileo submitted. On the 5th March 1616, the decree prepared
bythe Congregation of the Index against the heliocentric thesis waspromulgated,
and three works in which this thesis was maintainedwere condemned; with
no mention however of that of Galileo.Finally, on the 22nd June 1633,
the Congregation of theInquisition or Holy Office, having first detailed
the proceedingsof 1616, formulated a sentence under which Galileo
"vehementlysuspected of heresy for having held and believed the
doctrine,which is false and contrary to Holy Scripture, that the sun is
thecentre of the world", and "for having held and believed
that adoctrine which has been declared and defined as contrary to theHoly Scriptures can still be held and defended as probable",incurs
all the censures provided by the law against suchdelinquents. He is
absolved from these penalties provided that hedetests and denounces
"the aforesaid errors and heresies".Nevertheless, that his
previous disobedience might not gounpunished, Galileo was condemned to
certain penalties.

The decree of the 5th March 1616 was not, of course, a dogmaticdecree
issued in irreformable matter by an infallible authority;but it was
certainly a doctrinal decree, issued in reformablematter by a fallible
authority. Choupin wrongly believes that notbeing dogmatic the decree
must needs be disciplinary: "It was apurely disciplinary decree,
although resting on considerations ofa doctrinal order; the Congregation
of the Index is absolutelyincompetent to issue dogmatic decrees"
(op. cit., p. 165). Thedecree of the 22nd June 1633 was simultaneously
doctrinal (theheliocentric thesis was judged to be contrary to
Scripture) anddisciplinary (Galileo was condemned to imprisonment and
given apenance).

(4) Fallible as they were, these decrees were not withoutauthority.
To what, in conscience, did they oblige?

In themselves, they made obligatory in the first place thefulfilment
of the exterior penalties prescribed. They made itobligatory furthermore
under pain of a sin against prudence—nota certain one, since they were
not prudentially infallible, but avery probable one at least—to take
the geocentric thesis forthe present as true and revealed in Scripture,
and theheliocentric one as false and opposed to Scripture. It remainedthat they might possibly be erroneous.

The possibility of proving the heliocentric theory remained open.(The
publication of such a proof was subject to the duty of notgiving
scandal. ) And anyone in possession of or publishing thisproof would,
ipso facto, possess or publish the proof that theheliocentric theory was
neither heretical nor contrary toScripture, since scientific truth
cannot contradict revealedtruth. That is what St. Robert Bellarmine said
in a letter whichhe addressed on the 12th April 1615 to another
Copernican, theCarmelite, Paul Antonio Foscarini: "I say that, if
there is a truedemonstration that the sun is at the centre of the world
and theearth in the third heaven, that the sun does not revolve aroundthe earth, but the earth around the sun, then we should have toapply
much circumspection in explaining those passages ofScripture which seem
to speak otherwise, and to admit that we donot understand them rather
than declare that what is demonstratedis false. But I shall not believe
in the existence of such ademonstration until it is shown me; and to
prove that, bysupposing the sun at the centre and the earth in the
heaven, wecan save the appearances is not the same thing as proving that
thesun is at the centre in reality. The first demonstration I believeto be possible; but as for the second I very much doubt it; and ina
case of doubt we ought not to abandon the interpretation ofScripture
given by the holy Fathers" (cited by Vacandard, art."Galilee",
Dict. de theol. cathol., col 1062).

If therefore Galileo was in possession of the proof of theheliocentric
thesis he could not be bound in conscience to disavowit interiorly, and
the error of the Holy Office was to constrainhim to do so. But was he in
possession of this proof? "Galileo, asLaplace the astronomer said,
supported this theory by analogies:rotation of the sun, phases of Venus,
movement of the satellitesof Jupiter. Such proofs by analogy have their
weight; even today,two centuries after Galileo, they constitute one of
the principalreasons for believing in the rotation of the earth. But
thesereasons, convincing perhaps for an intuitive genius like theFlorentine
scientist, were not sufficiently brought to the fore byhim; he wrongly
preferred to rely on proofs of much less value oreven arguments that
were quite false. That alone, from thescientific standpoint, was enough
to excuse the attitude of hisadversaries, and their final dismissal of
his case" (Pierre deVregille, art. "Galilee", Dict. apol.
de la foi cathol., col 168;cf. col. 191).

(5) Prudence demanded that the decrees should be received as true(they
could be untrue, but very probably they were true) as longas there was
no clear certainty of their error. In fact, they wereerroneous and
imprudent. Where precisely were the authors of thesefallible decrees at
fault?

They lacked the courage needed to detach the question of Scriptureat
once from the dispute over the geocentric issue. That, itseems, would
have been the prudent thing to do. "CardinalBaronius", wrote
Galileo to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, "used tosay that God did
not wish to teach us how the heavens go, but howwe are to go to heaven.
"One wishes that all the theologians ofthat day had spoken like
Cardinal Baronius ! Then they would nothave involved the fallible
magisterium of the Congregations in aprudential and doctrinal error.

St. Robert Bellarmine considered that, till proof to the contraryshould
be forthcoming, the true meaning of Scripture wasrepresented by the
geocentric thesis. So did most theologians,Catholic and Protestant. And
the Bible undoubtedly says that "thesun riseth and goeth down and
returneth to his place, and thererising again, maketh his round by the
south and turneth again tothe north" (Eccles. i. 5). But they
should have remembered andapplied the great exegetical principles laid
down by men like St.Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas—namely that the
Holy Spiritdid not set out to teach men the inner constitution of
nature, butwhat may be useful for salvation (St. Augustine), and that
theBible speaks of nature according to the sensible appearances (St.Thomas).
When Galileo wanted to avail himself of these principles(cf. Vacandard,
loc. cit., col. 1080), many theologians failed torecognize them. These
same principles however were to be recalled,in a more authoritative
manner, no doubt, by Leo XIII in theEncyclical Providentissimus, of the
18th November 1893.

(6) Let us note that if Galileo seemed to understand better thanBellarmine
that the Bible speaks of natural phenomena onlyaccording to the
appearances, Bellarmine seemed to understandbetter than Galileo that
astronomical science (and so also the newphysics, which was a science of
the same type) aims less at makingknown what is than at "saving the
appearances". Because itsempiriological character was at first
overlooked by the scientists"physico-mathematical science, when
perverted from its true natureand erected into a system of metaphysics,
of absolute knowledge ofreality (and therefore of mechanistic
philosophy, of which onlySpinoza was later to provide the perfect form)
was bound to turninto heresy and to constitute a great danger for the
human mind" (J. Maritain, The things that Are Not Caesar's, trans. J. F.Scanlan, London 1939, p. 199). There lay the danger—of an orderother
than scientific—which science, as Galileo understood it,was bringing
on the Church.

As Hartmann Grisar, S. J. ., seems to have established inGalileistudien
(Ratisbon 1882, p. 337 et seq. ) astronomicalscience, on the whole,
suffered neither arrest nor regression onaccount of the condemnation of
Galileo, not even among Catholicscientists. They did not cease to
develop the Copernican system,doing it good service in fact by treating
it as a mere"hypothesis". As to those among them whose
researches were reallyhindered by an over-scrupulous submission to the
decrees of theHoly Office, Grisar defends them by saying that the
supernaturalgood of obedience takes precedence in the world's history
over thenatural good of scientific truth. This consideration is based onthe fact that God knows how to draw good out of evil, a fact thatwe
can easily recognize without ceasing to regret the doubleerror,
exegetical and scientific, committed by so high a tribunal.

(7) The decrees concerning Galileo, having been approved only inthe
common form, are fallible. Are they, as I have asserted,magisterial and
doctrinal—that is to say, do they recommend theacceptance of a
doctrine or condemn a doctrine as heretical,verging on heresy, or
erroneous? Or were they, as some havethought it possible to maintain,
merely disciplinary, involvingonly the application of a sanction, the
imposition of an externalpenance?

Whatever opinion is here adopted I do not believe that it willessentially
modify the problem raised by the condemnation, or thesolution required.
To me it seems clear however that the decree of1616 was doctrinal, and
that of 1633 both doctrinal anddisciplinary.

In his work L'Inquisition et l'heresie, distinction de l'heresietheologique
et de l'heresie inquisitoriale: a propos de l'affaireGalilee, Paris
1912, the Abbe Leon Garzend tries to establish thatthe sentence of 1633
was purely disciplinary. After a closeexamination of the sentence he
points out, on the one hand, threefacts which tend to prove that the
ecclesiastical judges of 1633did not take the opinion that the earth
moves for a genuine heresy(e. g. Galileo was condemned as
"suspected of heresy", not as aformal heretic); and, on the
other hand, certain facts which seemto show that they considered him as
heretical (e. g. he wasordered to abjure "the said errors and
heresies"). There istherefore an apparent contradiction in the
sentence. It would beremoved by the fact that in the days of the
Inquisition there weretwo notions of heresy: theological, which is what
we should stillcall heresy today and alone was punished by burning; andinquisitorial, of wider scope, containing everything which,without
being strictly and formally heretical, was considered asimperiling the
faith and was therefore a subject for penalties oreven preventive
measures. Hence Garzend's conclusion: "Galileoand his theories were
inquisitorially heretical; but neither henor they were so according to
the doctrine of the contemporarytheologians. The judges of 1633 were
thinking of Galileo asheretical in the inquisitorial sense and as
non-heretical in thetheological sense; and this occasioned the apparent
contradictionin the sentence. The declaration of heresy against
Copernicanismin the sentence envisaging only inquisitorial heresy, and
thisbeing different from doctrinal, a Pope could order itspromulgation
even though Copernicanism had only disciplinarydecisions against
it" (op. cit., p. 429). But, in fact, toovercome what Garzend calls
a contradiction it would be enough toadmit that the judges of 1633
condemned Galileo as suspect ofhaving adhered to theses which, to them,
appeared to be certainlyheretical.

(8) To conclude. The anti-Galilean decrees were not guaranteedeither
as absolute and irreformable, or even as infalliblyprudent. They could
claim no more than a fallible assistance.According to Garzend it should
be said that the judges of 1633condemned Galileo, not for having
doubtfully adhered to what forthese judges was certainly a heresy, but
for having certainlyadhered to what seemed to them to deserve some lower
note thanheresy, e. g. the note of temerity. Garzend cites elsewhere
manytheologians of the time who, like Bellarmine, did not, for theirown
part, consider the Galilean hypothesis as certainlyirreconcilable with
the faith (Garzend however recognizes that thejudges of 1633 applied to
Galileo the penalty provided for thecase where the delinquent admits the
heretical fact but denies hisheretical intention, although he is under
strong suspicion: ibid.,p. 32). Garzend consequently thinks that the
sentence of 1633should be regarded as purely disciplinary. I think, on
thecontrary, that it was at once doctrinal and disciplinary. It wasdoctrinal
because it condemned the heliocentric thesis as"contrary to
Scripture". It would still have been so had itqualified this thesis
with some lesser note than heresy. But, andthis is the essential thing,
it was evident even to allcontemporary opinion that this doctrinal
condemnation was issuedin revocable matter, and by a fallible authority.

2. The Power To Propose Practical Truth

What Jesus entrusted to the Apostles and their successors was thewhole
sum of the truth to which He bore witness. The teaching tobe carried to
the nations was concerned not only with what is, butalso with what is to
be done—by what ways we may come to ourlast end. There is therefore an
authority assisted till the end oftime, competent to announce in Jesus'
name both speculative andpractical truth, both faith and morals. We are
now to discuss thissecond task of the magisterium, its task in the
practical field.And to bring out its various titles to rule in this
domain we mustfirst trace some of the great divisions in the field of
Christianmorals.

A. Division Of Christian Moral Precepts

1. Precepts Of The Human Order

The highest precepts of all, St. Thomas says, are the firstprinciples
of the natural law: [802] good must be done, evilavoided, man should act
like a reasonable being, not like a beast,and so on. All human morality
turns on these fundamentalprinciples, which are as the imprint of the
eternal law on ourhearts.

The secondary principles of the natural law make up a secondclass: no
innocent man is to be killed, all debts should be paid,polygamy is
forbidden, and so on. They are implicit in the primaryprecepts. They
flow from these as necessary conclusions. We passfrom one to the other,
not by addition of matter from without butby simple unfolding of what is
already given; and if a process ofreasoning is required it does not
produce, but simply manifests,the truth of the conclusion. We remain
therefore on the plane theof natural and imprescriptible law, that is to
say of precepts ofwhich God is the immediate Author.

But since God inclines men to a development of their life which isnot
possible save in a social state, and so under the direction ofan
authority, a power, we may here recognize the source—fallible no doubt, but
providential—of a new order of precepts.This is positive law. Its
highest but indirect source is theAuthor of human nature Himself; its
second, immediate and falliblesource is the prince, the sovereign, the
State. The whole role ofpositive law is, in a way, to extend and prolong
the natural law,to carry its light, however enfeebled, as far as it will
go. Itsprecepts are of two kinds.

The first are drawn from natural law by way of consequence;doubtless
not necessary (not as the secondary precepts of thenatural law result
from the primary) but at any rate congruent.The right of private
property, for example, will be establishedthus: human life supposes the
cultivation of the soil; but whenthe soil belongs to all and none, it is
bound to be badlycultivated; so that anything like an advanced state ofcivilization will require it to be parceled out among manypossessors.
This conclusion is not an absolutely universal truth,admitting of no
exceptions—the Trappists cultivate their fieldsin common—but it is
sufficiently universal to admit of onlyrare exceptions, to impose itself
gradually on all peoples, and topertain at last to what St. Thomas calls
the "jus gentium", orhuman law.[803]

Other precepts are drawn from the natural law by way ofdetermination:
a murderer ought to be punished—but by whatpunishment, death or
imprisonment? A hidden treasure is found in afield—does it belong to
the finder or to the owner of thefield? Several answers are possible;
the prince will choose thatwhich seems most to favour the common good,
and thenceforward itwill be the only just one. Such are the
determinations of the "civil law".

Thus under the head of natural morality there fall four greattypes of
precept. The first two are covered by the natural law,that is by those
precepts that God has imprinted on men's hearts.The last two are covered
by the positive law, that is to say bythe precepts of human law and the
civil law, promulgatedimmediately by a fallible human authority, but one
that Godcommands us to obey.

2. Precepts Of The Christian Order

The foregoing division of the precepts of the purely human orderwill
help us to classify those that fall under the Christian moralorder.

The first group will consist of all those precepts that weredirectly
revealed by God. They play a part in the supernaturalmoral order
analogous to that of the first principles of thenatural law: they are
the fundamental precepts on which all therest in some way or other
depend. To enumerate them completely isimpossible; the Bible is full of
them. Some are addressed tospecial or restricted classes, such as the
counsels: "If thouwouldst be perfect, go, sell all thou hast and
give to the poor";and some are common, addressed to all, such as
the commandments: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart
and with thywhole soul, and with thy whole mind, and thy neighbour as
thyself."If these precepts ratify those of the natural order (those
givenon Sinai are, in themselves, knowable by reason), and ratify toothe temporal duties that concern the family and the state, theyadd
heavenly reasons for their observance. This first groupfurthermore
proclaims more sublime duties relating to the infusedvirtues,
theological and moral—these latter surpassing anythingthe pagans
dreamed of—and to the sacramental power: "Amen,amen, I say unto
you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man,and drink his blood, you
shall not have life in you"; and again tothe jurisdictional power:
"Whoso heareth you, heareth me; whosodespiseth you, despiseth me;
and whoso despiseth me, despiseth himthat sent me."

Into the second group we shall put all precepts implicitly, but ofcourse
really, contained in the foregoing, precepts which theChurch proposes
either as revealed or at least as irreformablytrue. In promulgating them
explicitly the Church adds no newrevelation to the primitive deposit,
she merely brings out itscontents into the light of day. It is
explicitly revealed that ourLord, before ascending to heaven, made His
Apostles and theirsuccessors true judges of sins, for the purpose of
forgiving orretaining them (John xx. 22), and it is thereby implicitlyrevealed that an exact avowal of sins, without which all judgmentwould
be impossible, is of obligation for the sinner. There thenwe have a
practical truth implicitly contained in the Gospel, andtaught as
revealed by the Council of Trent.[804] As examples ofpractical truths
taught not as revealed but nevertheless asinfallibly and irreformably
true, we may cite the condemnationsissued by Pius VI of certain
propositions on the duel—as that asoldier accepting a challenge from
fear of discredit in the armyand loss of his livelihood is without sin;
that to avoid dishonourone can accept or provoke a duel provided one is
sure in advancethat it will be stopped; etc.[805]

The precepts of these first two groups belong to the revealeddeposit.
The Church is their bearer, but not their promulgator. She proclaims them
all-including those that concern her ownstructure, life and preservation—as
divine and imprescriptible.These are the commandments that God has given
us out of love forher, not simply her commandments. The voice is that of
theBridegroom, not simply that of the Bride. In transmitting it andin
declaring its meaning, the Church enjoys an infallible andabsolute
assistance.

But just as, on the purely human plane, the precepts of thenatural
law promulgated by the Author of our nature have to beextended and made
precise in the precepts of the positive law,promulgated by the temporal
power; so, on the spiritual plane, theprecepts of the divine law,
revealed by God and proposed by thedeclaratory power, have to be
extended and made precise in theprecepts of the ecclesiastical law,
promulgated by the canonicalor legislative power. And, like the precepts
of the temporalpower, those of the canonical power will also be of two
sorts.

The first will be drawn from the revealed law by way ofconsequence,
not indeed as necessary consequences (as are preceptsfirst implicitly
revealed and then explicitly promulgated by theChurch), but as
congruent. For example, there is a divine preceptenjoining all to
"eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink hisblood" (John vi.
54), and another enjoining the sinner to haverecourse to one who in
Jesus' name can "forgive or retain sins" (John xx. 23). But seeing how
easily men lose sight of thingsinvisible, these precepts might be
neglected by many; whereforethe Councils of Lateran and of Trent, with a
wisdom confirmed byexperience, have concluded to the obligation of
annual confessionand Easter communion.

The other class of precepts are drawn from the revealed law by wayof
determination. There is a scriptural precept imposing self-denial and fasting;
hence the Church has determined certain formsof self-denial such as
abstinence and certain modalities offasting. It is a divine precept that
Christ is to be honouredwherever He is; and He is in the Eucharist; so
that the Church hasprovided for the public veneration of the Blessed
Sacrament inprocessions. It is a divine precept that the Flesh of the
Son ofMan is to be eaten and His Blood drunk; but the Body and Blood ofChrist are found under both the sacramental species, so that theprecept
will be observed whether we communicate under one speciesor under both;
and the Church can regulate the matter according tothe needs of the age.
Since the end of the Middle Ages she haschosen to give communion to the
laity only under one species, andto the clergy too when they are not
saying Mass.

The precepts of the third and fourth groups belong toecclesiastical
law. They are the work of the canonical orlegislative power, which is
not supported by any absoluteassistance, but by a prudential or relative
assistance. Theyconstitute the secondary practical message of the
Church.

The division of the precepts of the ecclesiastical law accordingas
they are drawn from the revealed law by way of consequence(third group)
or by way of determination (fourth group), is adivision made from the
standpoint of their genesis, their mode oforigin. It has the advantage
of emphasising the organicdependence, the vital link, which connects the
precepts of thecanonical power with the higher precepts of the
declaratory power.

There is, as we have said, another way of dividing the precepts ofthe
canonical power. It proceeds from the teleological standpoint,according
as their end is either to protect the revelation bymeasures of general
or particular interest, or to assure theempirical existence of the
Church. And it takes account of thedifferent degrees of assistance they
can claim. This division Inow propose to explore, my purpose being to
give a more detailedexplanation of the force of the prudential precepts.
But first letus summarise these various divisions of the practical
message ofthe Church.

3. Synoptic Table Of These Divisions

Above all we must clearly note the distinction between theprecepts of
the divine law (primary practical message of theChurch) and the precepts
of the ecclesiastical law (secondarypractical message of the Church).

[the diagram on page 363 of the book was put into an indented treefor
e-text]

Precepts:

1 of the declaratory power (primary practical message) and so ofdivine
law and absolute, which are revealed:
1 .1 explicitly 1st group
1 .2 implicitly 2nd group and which are
1 .2 .1 defined as revealed
1 .2 .2 defined simply as irrevocable
2 of the canonical power (secondary practical message) and so ofecclesiastical
law and prudential, subdivided in two ways:
2 .1 from the genetic standpoint according as drawn fromrevelation:
2 .1 .1 by way of consequence (congruent) 3rd group
2 .1 .2 by way of determination 4th group
2 .2 from the teleological standpoint according as their end is
2 .2 .1 to protect the revelation by2 .2 .1 .1 precepts of general interest
2 .2 .1 .2 precepts of particular interest
2 .2 .2 to assure the empirical existence of the Church; preceptsof the
biological order

B. The Force Of The Prudential Precepts

Just as the precepts of the natural law have to be extended andgiven
precision in those of the positive law, so the precepts ofthe
declaratory power, which are of revealed and divine law, haveto be
extended and given precision in those of the canonicalpower, which
belong to ecclesiastical law.

The precepts of the declaratory power are proposed in virtue of anabsolute
assistance and in an irrevocable manner. The Church is noless assisted
in teaching morals than she is in teaching thefaith, and if she could be
deceived in the former she could bedeceived in the latter, since it is
of faith that every virtue isgood and every vice is evil.[806]

The precepts of the canonical power, whose role it is to extendand
determine those of the declaratory power, share in theircertitude, but
unequally. For, just as we have divided theteachings of the canonical
magisterium into two classes accordingas they fully or only partially
engage its authority, so we mustdivide the precepts, the commandments,
of the canonical power intotwo specifically distinct groups. In the
first we shall put thoseprecepts that fully engage the canonical power
and which thereforeapply universally and always. They formulate the main
lines ofconduct demanded by the good of the whole Church, and prescribethe measures that stand in necessary connection—a morallynecessary
connection—with the canonical ends of the Church,[807] which ends are to
smooth the soul's path to divine things,and to particularize the social
order postulated by the Gospelrevelation: e. g. to lay down the
conditions for a valid marriage.In the second group we shall put those
precepts that engage thecanonical power only partially, and thus have a
merely particularor temporary character. They have no morally necessary
connectionwith the spiritual good of the whole Church: e. g. this
particularmarriage is valid. If it be true, as Melchior Cano says, that
thedivine aid is never wanting in necessary things, but does notoverflow
on to the superfluous, "sicut Deus non deficit innecessariis, ita
non abundat in superfluis",[808] the assistancepromised to precepts
of general application, and that promised tothose of merely particular
application, will not be of the samenature: the absolute certitude of
the precepts of the declaratorypower will be participated proportionally
or analogically, notunivocally, in the two cases. Let us try to see this
in greaterdetail.

1. Precepts Of General Application

a. Their Infallibility Radically Absolute

The great prudential precepts, ordained for the general good ofthe
Church, are closely and immediately connected with theabsolute precepts
of revelation, whence they stem as from theirproper root; so that they
participate in a direct and privilegedway in their infallibility. It can
be said that the infallibilitythat guarantees them is absolute—not,
doubtless, directly andformally, but radically and fundamentally. It
follows that theycan never prescribe anything immoral or pernicious,
anything thatsins against the evangelical law or the natural law. Since
theChurch is assisted in the task of leading men to eternal life, shewill not mislead them by erring either about what has to bebelieved
or about what has to be done: if, for example, the Gospelhad contained a
commandment to communicate always under two kinds,she would never have
been able to ordain communion under one; andsimilarly, she cannot enjoin
on her children any acts that clashwith the natural law, anything that
partakes for example ofidolatry, lying, or injustice. Theologians are
here unanimous.[809]

b. Their Infallibility Formally Prudential

The great precepts of the canonical power are not only guaranteedby
an absolute infallibility in their principle, their foundation,their
root; they are also (and this is a result) guaranteed by aprudential
infallibility in themselves, directly and formally. Itis not enough to
say that they can never prescribe anythingcontrary to the natural law
and the law of the Gospel, it mustfurther be held that all are wise,
prudent and beneficial. Thereare "grave and just reasons",
said the Council of Trent, thathave led the Church to ratify the custom
of communicating thefaithful under one kind;[810] the same Council
declares it"opportune, praiseworthy, pious and religious "to
carry theEucharist in procession;[811] it teaches not only that the
Canonof the Mass is free from all error, but also that "it containsnothing but what breathes holiness and piety and lifts up theheart
to God";[812] it affirms that the liturgical ceremoniesaccompanying
the celebration of Mass are well adapted to bring outthe majesty of the
sacrifice and to facilitate contemplation ofthe sublime realities it
contains.[813] Precepts so universallyand constantly proposed cannot
lack wisdom, prudence andexpediency. John of St. Thomas spoke his true
mind on the subjectwhen he wrote that "as for the laws proposed to
the whole Church,such as those drawn up by a General Council or
incorporated in theCorpus Juris, granting the general approbation they
enjoy, it isdifficult to admit that they contain even prudential error["difficilius admittitur etiam prudentialis error"], so that theyare not to be waived without some special permission."[814]Thus,
between the absolute assistance of the revealed precepts,and the
fallible prudential assistance of particular precepts, oneadmits a
prudential and infallible assistance for each of theprecepts of general
interest. These can never be imprudent noreven useless.[815]

c. Not Necessarily Representing a Maximum of Prudence

However, it does not necessarily follow that precepts of generalapplication
will always be the most prudent possible. For, unlikethe natural and
evangelical laws, which are immutable and perfect,ecclesiastical laws,
even when enacted with the special assistanceof the Holy Spirit, aim at
bringing order into matters that arealways changing, and therefore admit
of a certain flexibility anda more or less perfect adaptation. For
example, the laws on thenecessity of annual confession and Easter
Communion would havedone good, no doubt, if promulgated some years
earlier than theywere; again, they might have been kept back for some
years. Moregenerally, the Church reserves the right to modify and
ameliorateeven the general provisions of her Canon Law.

d. How Defined and Recognized

When we speak of measures of general applicability the expressionshould
not be taken in a material way, but in a living,qualitative and formal
way. It indicates ecclesiastical measureswhich are general in a
three-fold respect: by their final cause, their formal cause, and their
efficient cause. First, they reflectthe common good of the supernatural
society, to which they areimmediately ordered, and they are, on the
supernatural level, whatmeasures of public safety are on the natural.
Then, they are lawsin the strict sense, not commands in the strict
sense: law, saysSt. Thomas, defines the rule of the common good, command
appliesthis rule to particular matters.[816] Lastly, they engage theprudential
authority of the Church fully, not merely partially:they must be
approved by the whole Church, by an oecumenicalcouncil, by the Pope, not
merely by a number of bishops or theRoman Congregations with the Pope
giving his approval only "informa communi". Most of the
measures in question will in additionbe general in their material cause,
that is to say the subjects towhom they apply: the laws on Easter
Communion, on fasting andabstinence, concern all the faithful; some
however may concernonly particular regions, or particular categories of
the faithfulsuch as clerics or religious. However, in spite of all this,
itwill not always be easy to recognize measures that are trulygeneral.
And measures that have once been general can cease to beso, and fall by
degrees into desuetude. At bottom, the best signof the universality with
which the Church intends to invest a lawlies in the insistence with
which she proposes, approves andrecommends it during the course of the
ages.

e. The Commandments of the Church

I have mentioned several of these measures of general interest. Itmust
be insisted that they always arise as consequences ordeterminations of
the great ordinances of Scripture. The laws offasting and abstinence for
example are bound up with the Gospelprecept to do penance (Matt. xi.
21). The laws prescribing Sundayattendance at Mass, or again, the mode
of celebrating Mass, theuse of unleavened bread in the Western Church,
are bound up withthe commandment to commemorate the sacrifice of Holy
Thursday (1 Cor. xi. 24). The laws prescribing Easter Communion and the modeof
distributing Communion under one kind are bound up with thecommand to
receive the Body and Blood of the Lord (John vi. 53-58), both present under each
kind and in each fragment of eachkind. The custom of carrying the
Blessed Sacrament in processionis bound up with the commandment to
confess Christ before men(Matt. x. 32). The law of annual confession is
bound up with thecommand given to the Apostles and their successors to
remit sins(John xx. 23). The law of priestly celibacy in the Latin
Church islinked with St. Paul's reflection: "He who is without a
wife issolicitous for the things that belong to the Lord" (1 Cor.
vii.32). The laws obliging confessors to obtain the approbation oftheir
bishop, and the canonical conditions for the validity ofmarriages, are
connected with the general laws concerning theorderly feeding of the
sheep of Christ, the general power ofbinding and loosing, and so on.

f. Approbation of Religious Orders

The approbation of a religious order by the Church may contain aprudential
measure of general interest. It is a complex action,analysable into two
judgments;[817] an absolute one, pertainingto the declaratory power and
bearing on a dogmatic fact—"Thismonastic rule is in harmony with
the Gospel ideal and well fittedto lead souls to perfection"—and
a practical and prudential onepertaining to the canonical power—"It
is good, prudent anduseful here and now to propose this monastic rule to
the faithfuldesirous of tending to evangelical perfection. "In the
measure inwhich this latter judgment continues fully to engage the
canonicalauthority, as it does for example in the case of the great
Orderseverywhere and always approved by the Church, it remainspractically
infallible; consequently; it cannot be other thanprudent, opportune,
useful and beneficial. But religious ordersmay decline, may cease to
answer the needs of an epoch, andgradually lose the favour of the
Church. Then the general andinfallible prudential judgment which
approved them becomesparticular and fallible. Such religious orders may
even besuppressed as harmful or superfluous.[818]

2. Precepts Of Particular Application

a. Their Nature

Particular decisions are concerned with the application ofuniversal
laws, their adaptation to circumstances of place andtime. They cover an
immense field, comprising innumerablelegislative measures, decrees, all
judicial verdicts, all penalsentences, and so on.

St. Thomas, as I have said, recognizes three kinds of judgments ofthe
Church: those concerning the faith, those that areintermediate, and
those concerning particular facts, such as thedistribution of
ecclesiastical goods, the settlement of lawsuits,and so on.[819]
Judgments defining the faith emanate from thedeclaratory power and for
matter they have only what is revealedwhether explicitly or implicitly.
The intermediate judgmentsemanate, in my view, from the canonical power
fully engaging itsauthority in ecclesiastical matters of general
interest. Judgmentsof the last type are put out by the canonical power
in particularmatters, and hence, whatever otherwise their importance,
they donot touch the structure of the Church; they cannot, if erroneous,imperil the salvation of the faithful in general; and consequentlythey
engage the canonical power only partially, even when issuedby the
Sovereign Pontiff.

b. Fallible Prudential Assistance

Undoubtedly even in these matters God will assist His Church, butnot
to the exclusion of all possibility of error or inadequacy.The canonical
power may be led astray by false witnesses, byignorance or passion in
its depositaries, when it confers anoffice on a subject thought worthy,
when it pronounces on thevalidity of a marriage, or when it issues a
sentence ofexcommunication. One can even imagine it prescribing, in all
goodfaith, an act in reality contrary to the natural or evangelicallaw.
In such a case obedience will be impossible and it will bebetter to
accept excommunication with faith and humility.[820]

c. Relation Between the; Notions of Authority and Infallibility

Besides the absolute assistance of the declaratory power and theinfallible
prudential assistance of the canonical power fullyengaged, there is
therefore room for a prudential assistance thatwill be fallible, though
far from ineffective. We might even saythat this assistance is, in a
certain sense, infallible. As ageneral rule, to be sure, we make a
distinction between authorityand infallibility, and say that obedience
is due in virtue ofauthority, not in virtue of infallibility. Thus, the
authority ofparents is indisputable, but nobody would call it infallible
inthe proper sense of the term. However, by a paradox that is merelyapparent
and may at times conceal a deeper insight into things,[821] it could undoubtedly
be maintained that authority is onlylegitimate when it enjoys a kind of
infallibility, notinfallibility proper but one which does guarantee the
prudence,wisdom, beneficence, if not of each of its interventions
divisive,at least of the mass of its interventions collective. Parentalauthority does, on the whole, assure the due education of children—"If
you, being evil, know how to give good things to yourchildren. .
."; political authority does on the whole result insomething that
is better than anarchy; the authority of a superiorfreely chosen does in
fact secure a sufficient liberation fromself-will in the religious life.
Similarly, and with all the morereason, it can be said that the
canonical power is efficaciouslyassisted by God, if not in each of its
particular decisionsdivisive, singillatim, at least in its decisions as
a whole,collective, ut in pluribus: that on the whole its interventionsare happy rather than unhappy, useful rather than useless; that itis,
in a word, guaranteed by a prudential aid that deserves to becalled
infallible in the improper sense.

C. The Force Of Decisions Of The Biological Order

Finally, below absolute decisions whose immediate end is to definethe
revealed deposit, and prudential decisions, whether general orparticular,
whose immediate end is to protect it, we must placeprudential decisions
whose end is empirically to determine thecontingent relations of the
Church with the world, to assure theconcrete conditions of her daily
existence, and thus to presideover the daily life which the Church has
among men.[822]

1. Their Fallibility

It is owing to the hierarchy that the Church, the Body of Christ,the
Kingdom of God, is in ceaseless process of formation herebelow in the
highest mode of perfection compatible with hertemporal and crucified
existence. She is the point of convergence,the focus and the support, of
all the sanctity and all thesupernatural truth that exists in our world,
and so becomes theinstrument par excellence for the infusion of a divine
life intoour cultural life, of eternity into time. All the problemsconcerning
the concrete relations of the Church with the kingdomsof this world,
with great political movements and great culturalorientations, are
therefore bound to present themselves to thecanonical power. To enable
it to solve them, the Holy Spirit willsupport it. But this divine
assistance, which I have calledbiological, will be of a particular kind.
It will spare the Churchneither trials, nor hesitations, nor
disappointments, nor evenindubitable errors. It will often seem to exert
only a very remotecontrol over her conduct, to abandon her to merely
human light andhuman power, to leave her to achieve her education at her
own riskand peril and at the price of bitter experience. Even more thanthe assistance promised to the particular ecclesiastical precepts,this
biological assistance will be in the proper sense fallible.And yet, of
this too it may be said that it is, in a sense,infallible, since it will
be always sufficient to assure a certaingeneral direction, to save at
least the minimum of temporalconditions needed to ensure the permanence
of the Church and heruninterrupted visible presence on the stage of
history.

2. Their Weakness More Apparent In Proportion As They Are Closer To The
Temporal

The measures here in question are, as it were, the fine capillaryvessels
of the jurisdictional power. They feel out the way to befollowed in
regions often shifting, uncertain and full ofsurprises. Their prudence,
wisdom and beneficial character willnot always be evident to all eyes.
Sometimes even they may seem tolack homogeneity when the depositaries of
the canonical power,abandoning their habitual reserve, adopt contrary
opinions "onthis side or that of the Pyrenees", not to say in
the samecountry, and are all equally persuaded that they are faithfulinterpreters of the mind of the Church and of the supremeauthority.
Then the Church, one in all that touches divine things,will seem to be
divided in the face of the things of this world—when she is called on, for
example, to support conservative orprogressive political tendencies, to
recognize the legitimacy of aform of government or even of a
dynasty,[823] the justice orinjustice of a war or a conquest, or the
denunciation of anarticle of an international treaty. The consciences of
thefaithful will be subjected to severe trials. Shall we always beforced
to live in the midst of the racking distinctions to whichChristendom had
to apply herself in the days of the Great Schismor of the trial of Joan
of Arc? Unfortunately, they are likely totrouble us for a long time yet.
But—and here perhaps historycan record some progress—if it be true
that the essential andtraditional distinction between the Kingdom of God
and thekingdoms of this world is to be much more marked in theinstitutions
of the future Christendom than it was in those ofmedieval Christendom,
then the cases of conscience, the trials,the conflicts of which we
speak, instead of seeming to invade theinner sanctuaries of the spirit,
will tend more and more to bekept on the periphery, on the boundary line
between the spiritualand the temporal.

3. Their Nature Beneficial In The Majority Of Cases

Let us adduce some examples of the intervention of the canonicalpower
in the biological order, and try to bring out some of theircharacteristics.

1. Not being infallible, they can at times be erroneous; and itcan
happen, though such cases are rare, that the Sovereign Pontiffhimself
may be misled into giving decisions on informationdeliberately wrong.
After the Polish insurrection of 1830, GregoryXVI, deceived by the
reports of Nicholas I, and desirous above allof abating the persecution
that afflicted the Catholics of Russia,thought it good to remind the
Poles of the maxims of the Church onsubmission to the temporal
authorities. He soon recognized hiserror and expressed his regret
publicly. Thirty years later, afterthe insurrection of 1864, Pius IX,
protesting against the doingsof Alexander II, cried: "I very well
know how to distinguish thesocialist revolution from reasonable
liberty" (F. Mourret, op.cit., pp. 201 and 483).

2. More commonly perhaps they may look only to one aspect of asituation
and overlook others of equal or greater importance. Theywill then be
partial; and will not solve all the practical doubtsof a Christian.
Imagine a politician who promises to maintainCatholic schools and
institutions and so to favour the cause ofreligion and of the Church.
The spiritual power will be led tosupport him, and the bishops, in
general terms, will recommend hiscandidates to the votes of Catholic
electors. But perhaps thispolitician, whether by incompetence or
otherwise, proves to be anevil influence, and instead of serving the
Church he gravelycompromises her by the general trend of his conduct; he
may evenseem to become her adversary, since she is the first to requirethe human order to be governed with wisdom and justice; andcitizens
who would act as good Catholics and work for a Christianpolitical order,
feel bound to oppose him. To be truly faithful tothe spirit and the
doctrine of the Church, they ought, as far aspossible, to weigh the good
that is done her openly against thedamage that is done in less obvious
ways; and their decision willthen be just and enlightened. But all those
who—whetherprelates or laymen—attempt to save the biological
existence ofthe Church by sacrificing the integrity of her doctrine, thepurity of her morals, or the recognition of her sovereignty, willin
any case certainly betray her. It will always be an aberrationvoluntarily
to restrict the defence of a Catholic social order toa defence of
ecclesiastical persons, goods or immunities.

3. But it is certain that in the majority of cases theinterventions
of the canonical power will be salutary. Consider,for example, the
instructions of Leo XIII, motivated by a theologyas firm as it was
delicate, on the acceptance by the Church of theRepublic in France.
Abstractly, said the Pope, it is possible todefine the best form of
government and to recognize the advantagesof each form: "In this
order of speculative ideas, Catholics,like all citizens, are free to
prefer one form of government toanother, precisely because none of these
forms is in itselfopposed either to the dictates of right reason or to
the maxims ofChristianity" (Encyclical to the Clergy of France, 16
February,1892). In point of fact, every people possesses a determinate
formof government. Unlike that of the Church, this form is not final.It changes with the passage of time. Some bloody catastropheperhaps
throws a whole people into anarchy. Then a new governmentis needed.
"These changes "says the Pope, realistically, "arefar
from being always legitimate at the outset; in fact it wouldbe difficult
for them to be so. However, the final criterion ofthe common good and
public tranquillity makes it necessary toaccept the new governments,
once they are effectively established,in place of the old that have
disappeared. Thus the ordinary rulesfor the transference of power are
suspended, and may even befinally abolished with the passage of
time" (Encyclical to theFrench Cardinals, 3rd May 1892). When these
new governments,representing the authority that no society can dispense
with, areonce constituted, "to accept them is not merely allowable,
butdesirable, nay even demanded by the social necessities that havegiven
them birth and maintained them. . . And this great duty ofrespect and
dependence will remain as long as the needs of thecommon good require,
since this good is, after God, the first andlast law in a society"
(16th February 1892). One should "make noattempt to overturn them
or change their form. Hence the Church,guardian of the truest and
highest notion of politicalsovereignty, since she attributes its origin
to God, has alwaysreproved the doctrines and condemned the men that
rebel againstthe legitimate authority" (ibid. ). The Pope well
knows "thatnone, without temerity, can assign limits to the action
of divineProvidence in all that concerns the future of nations",
but, inthe case of France, "long experience has shown that the
state ofthe country has been so profoundly altered that it does not seempossible to revert to the ancient form of government without gravedisturbances"
(Letter to Cardinal Lecot, 13th August 1893). On theother hand, the
persistence of an important section of theCatholics—not in retaining
their preferences for the ancienregime and indulging "an affection
for it which deserves respect" (ibid. ), but in living on the periphery of
public life andsubordinating the defence of religion "to the
triumph of theirparty, even were this on the pretext that this party
seems themost likely to defend it" (3rd May 1892)—deeply imperils
thefuture of the Church in France. And so the Pope, whose sole end is"to safeguard the religious interests entrusted to him" (ibid. ),and who claims "the power and duty of choosing the means which, inall
the circumstances of time and place, are most fitted to servethe good of
religion" (Letter to Cardinal Perraud, 20th December1893), asks the
Catholics of France to accept the constitutedgovernment. But it is often
overlooked that he stronglydistinguishes between political power and
legislation: "Theacceptance of the one in no way implies acceptance
of the other inthose matters in which the legislator, forgetful of his
mission,places himself in opposition to the laws of God and the Church.And let it be well noted by all, to work and to use one'sinfluence
to get the government to change iniquitous or unwiselaws, is to give
proof of devotion to the fatherland as intelligent as it is courageous, and
suggests no shadow ofhostility to the public authorities" (3rd May
1892). "Legislationis the work of men invested with power, men who,
in fact, governthe nation. Whence it results that in practice the
quality of lawsdepends more on the quality of these men than on the form
ofgovernment" (16th February 1892). The Pope deplores the fact thatthere are men who set themselves "against the teachings andprescriptions
of him who is at the same time the protector and thehead of the
Church" (13th August 1893).

4. When they adopt a moderating tone it is not to stifle amovement
that may be authentically great and generous; but toeffect its more
perfect alignment with the real facts. There arealways to be found men
in the Church who "keenly perceive "—toadopt Newman's words—"and
are honestly eager to remedy,existing evils—evils of which divines in
this or that foreigncountry know nothing at all, and which even at home,
where theyexist, it is not everyone who has the means of
estimating."[824]And yet the competent authority, although it
recognizes all thatis just in their views and generous in their
intentions, may judgethat the time has not yet come when the truth they
havediscovered, which tends to dazzle them, can be fruitfullyintroduced
to the world. It will therefore recommend prudence,moderation, even, it
may be, silence. Newman, who had the tragicdefection of Lamennais before
his eyes, has no trouble injustifying this line of action. He writes in
the Apologia: "Inreading ecclesiastical history, when I was an
Anglican, it used tobe forcibly brought home to me how the initial error
of whatafterwards became heresy was the urging forward of some truthagainst
the prohibition of authority at an unseasonable time.There is a time for
everything, and many a man desires areformation of an abuse, or the
fuller development of a doctrine,or the adoption of a particular policy,
but forgets to ask himselfwhether the right time for it is come: and,
knowing that there isno one who will be doing anything towards its
accomplishment inhis own lifetime unless he does it himself, he will not
listen tothe voice of authority, and he spoils a good work in his owncentury, in order that another man, as yet unborn, may not havethe
opportunity of bringing it happily to perfection in the next.He may seem
to the world to be nothing else than a bold championfor the truth and a
martyr to free opinion, when he is just one ofthose persons whom the
competent authority ought to silence; and,though the case may not fall
within that subject-matter in whichthat authority is infallible, or the
formal conditions for theexercise of that gift may be wanting, it is
clearly the duty ofauthority to act vigorously in the case. Yet its act
will go downto posterity as an instance of a tyrannical interference
withprivate judgment, and of the silencing of a reformer, and of abase
love of corruption or error; and it will show still less toadvantage, if
the ruling power happens in its proceedings toevince any defect of
prudence or consideration. And all those whotake the part of that ruling
authority will be considered as time-servers, or indifferent to the cause of
uprightness and truth;while on the other hand, the said authority may be
accidentallysupported by a violent, ultra party, which exalts opinions
intodogmas, and has it principally at heart to destroy every school ofthought but its own."

Newman is right. A truth published out of due season will alwayslack
its proper point of application and so will seem to beradically infected
with error. That, at bottom, is why it getscondemned. It will have been
noticed that Newman's words apply tovarious kinds of canonical
interventions, those aiming atprotection of the revealed deposit or
simply at assuring thebiological existence of the Church.

Newman sees, of course, that these considerations apply to himselfas
to others.

"It seemed to me especially a time in which Christians had a callto
be patient, in which they had no other way of helping those whowere
alarmed than of exhorting them to have a little faith andfortitude, and
to ' beware ', as the poet says" of dangeroussteps '. This seemed
so clear to me, the more I thought of thematter, as to make me surmise
that, that if I attempted what hadso little promise in it [i. e. the
defence of revealed truthagainst the shifting objections of a science
still too unstable] Ishould find that the highest Catholic Authority was
against theattempt, and that I should have spent my time and my thought
indoing what either it would be imprudent to bring before the publicat
all, or what, did I do so, would only complicate mattersfurther which
were already complicated, without my interference,more than enough. And
I interpret recent acts of that authority asfulfilling my expectation; I
interpret them as tying the hands ofa controversialist, such as I should
be, and teaching us that truewisdom, which Moses inculcated on his
people, when the Egyptianswere pursuing them, 'Fear ye not, stand still;
the Lord shallfight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. ' And so far
fromfinding a difficulty in obeying in this case, I have cause to bethankful
and to rejoice to have so clear a direction in a matterof
difficulty."

Precisely a propos of Newman, whose great projects for theestablishment
of Catholicism in England were not welcomed tillafter his death, Pere
Clerissac has these penetrating lines: "When the dreamer of a great
religious work is a man of greatsensibility, he caresses his work as the
fruit of his personalart: as a true artist he endows it with subtle
exigencies andfebrile impulses. But the works of God are the fruits of
reasonand wisdom and, further, they must be such that they cannot beattributable
to caprice, nor even to the genius of a human artist.Thus God gave the
artist the honour of foreshadowing andannouncing the work, but He
reserves its accomplishment to HisChurch and often by more humble
instruments. This trial, this lawof purification of what is human and
individual, is imposed uponideas as well as upon works. If God did not
will that St. ThomasAquinas should complete his Summa, this was not
because thehumility of the great doctor was in peril, but because suchmatters are only elucidated and only completed in Eternity."[825]

5. But the canonical power will know how, when necessary, tosupport
bold initiatives—the founding of great orders, thegreat missionary
ventures of such as Cyril and Methodius, thegreat reforming labours of
men like St. Bernard. In the culturalsphere, consider how rapidly it
rallied to the unfamiliar views ofAugustine on the transformation of
civilisation,[826] or againthe rapid approbation of the innovating
boldness of Albert theGreat and Thomas Aquinas, when, to the scandal of
so many bishops,they introduced into the current of medieval thought the
suspectAristotle, so full of pagan infection, "who brought in his
traina crowd of Jews and Arabs whose commentaries were fraught withsuch
danger".[827]

4. The "Superior Sense Of Opportuneness"

Provided that we look at things from a sufficiently elevatedstandpoint
it becomes possible to understand what Pere Clerissachas called
"the superior sense of opportuneness belonging to theChurch."

The general goodwill of the Church towards all governmentalregimes,
towards all peoples, and more generally towards variousand even opposed
cultural complexes; her readiness to bid farewellto the social
formations that surrounded her infancy and were evenable to serve her;
the ease with which she accommodates herself—not indeed to settle down
comfortably, but to make it thestarting-point of her activities—to any
situation that permitsher to exist; her easy tolerance even of the
appearance ofcynicism when it is a question of avoiding greater evils
[828]—all this, which is sometimes apt to hurt certain humansensibilities
and to bring on the Church charges of indifference,opportunism, and even
ingratitude, is, in reality, but a proof ofher age-long condition as a
stranger on this earth, a sign of hersovereign attachment to spiritual
realities. Let us say that hermission is to use the things of time for
the purposes of eternity,that her detachment is the reverse of a greater
love, that herconstant availability witnesses to a higher fidelity.

There are, as we have seen and will see again, two Christian ways,both
necessary, two laws, by which temporal things are to bereferred to the
last end. They can be treated as pure means, andthen they enter into the
very structure of the Kingdom of God onearth; they are incorporated into
the Church. They can also playthe part of intermediate ends, and then,
although spiritualizedand sublimated, they belong to the civil order,
and remainextrinsic to the Church. The first law is that which the
Churchadopts for herself; it is that of her children acting precisely intheir capacity as Christians and immediately for the Kingdom ofGod.
The second law is that which the Church adopts for theChristian temporal
order, that of her children acting like goodChristians, but with the
immediate purpose of rendering to Caesarand to the human order the
things that are due to them.

These two laws are holy, providential, and indispensable to theChurch.
Yet they are quite distinct. Under the first the Christianconsiders
human things not indeed solely, but preferably, in theireternal aspect—"using
this world as though they used it not,for the figure of this world
passes away". What then attracts himis the likeness of the Cross of
Christ in these things. Itsuffices to make perfect children of the
Church: the Carthusiansand the Trappists, St. Paul the Hermit, St.
Benedict Joseph Labre,were perfectly children of the Church. Under the
second law theChristian considers human things as having a value of
their own.He takes them, not of course for a last end but for anintermediate
end, for their beauty, for their intrinsic goodness,for the reflection
of the creative splendour contained in them andconstituting their
mystery. This law too is required if there isto be a Christian temporal
order, Christian kings, scholars,workmen, artists, Christian culture, a
Christendom.

These two laws have not the same immediate aim or the same centreof
gravity; nor, therefore, have they the same rhythm. Thereexists indeed
no deep opposition between them, for they move tothe same last end;
rather, a state of tension, unhappy onoccasion, but in itself fruitful
and salutary. And that is why theChurch can stand aside and console
herself more easily than herchildren do for the disappearance of things
that were dear tothem. She fosters in them no taste for ruins. She
renews theircourage, turns them to new tasks, less brilliant it may be,
butnone the less urgent. Bernanos, characteristically, having begunby
denouncing the evil opportunism due to the egoism of churchmen,continues:
"The Church has a deposit, and guards it. She carriesthis Truth
within her like a woman big with child, a preciousfruit that draws all
the blood, all the virtue of the maternalbody till its maturity is
achieved; which must await the coming ofthe Kingdom of God. There is
nothing high or great in the worldwhich she will not be ready to
sacrifice when it comes toprotecting that which she bears in her side.
There is noengagement that she cannot break, no friend that she cannotabandon or disown for the security of the fruit of her womb; forif
this is lost, all is lost, and if she gives it to eternity allwill be
re-established at one stroke. No injustice issupernaturally irreparable
if only the principle of justice issafe. And if the principle of justice
is abolished all isafterwards nothing but injustice and
disorder."[829] But "sacred characteristic of transcendent egoism
"is not the rightphrase. Pere Clerissac's is better: "the
superior sense ofopportuneness that is proper to the Church".

3. Conclusions On The Jurisdictional Powers

A. The Gospel Words On The Jurisdictional Authority Indicative Of Several
Distinct Powers

In Jesus' commission to Peter—"Feed my sheep" (John xxi. 17),and:
"Whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be boundalso in
heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shallbe loosed also
in heaven" (Matt. xvi. 19)—there are indicated(over and above the
power of order) several jurisdictional powers:that of handing on the
divine revelations (declaratory power) andthat of promulgating
ecclesiastical decisions (canonical orlegislative power).

In the words: "Going therefore teach ye all nations. . . teachingthem
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matt. xxviii.
19-20), there are designated several teachings,several messages: the
revealed message concerning the doctrine offaith and of morals, and the
secondary message comprising themeasures indispensable or useful for the
diffusion, theunderstanding, and the practice of the first.

In the words: "I am with you all days even to the consummation ofthe
world" (Matt. xxviii. 20), are indicated several spiritualpresences
of Jesus to those charged with the instruction of thenations, several
assistances: the absolute or irreformableassistance, and the relative or
prudential assistance.

In the words: "He that heareth you, heareth me: and he thatdespiseth
you despiseth me. And he that despiseth me, despisethhim that sent
me" (Luke x. 16), are indicated several obediences,and consequently
as many rebellions: obedience or rebellion intheological matter in
respect of the revealed message, andobedience or rebellion in moral
matter in respect of the secondarymessage.

B. These Powers Not To Be Seen As Separated

These various powers, messages, assistances and obediences, areessentially
distinct from each other. Yet they are not strangersto each other. They
are implied in each other, the higher findingits normal complement in
the lower. The declaratory power callsfor the canonical power and its
subdivisions; the revealed messagecalls for the secondary message; the
absolute assistance calls forthe prudential assistance; theological
obedience calls for moralobedience. Between the former realities which
are of the divineorder and the latter which are of the ecclesiastical,
the gulf isdeep, and, in a sense, infinite. Nevertheless, if the
realities ofthese two planes are to be sharply distinguished statically,
fromthe standpoint of their structure they appear as most closelylinked
with each other dynamically from the concrete standpoint oftheir mutual
influence. Hence it is that a man who fully acceptsthe divine order will
not only believe in the existence of acanonical order but will find his
heart fully disposed to acceptthe directions of this canonical order:
and the man who rebelsknowingly and gravely against the directions of
the canonicalorder will be almost inevitably led to rebel one day
against thedivine order itself. History and psychology could show
perhaps howall the dissidences began in some misunderstanding of thecanonical
message of the Church; and how all returns to unitybegan, on the
contrary, by a recognition of her divine message.There is a way of
shutting oneself up in the secondary whichresults in by-passing all
great things; and there is a way ofgoing straight to all great things,
which ultimately leads one tosee the profound wisdom of the secondary.

Newman makes use (Apologia, Chap. V) of a comparison that helps usto
understand the connection of the declaratory and the canonicalpowers
(although they are not, as he calls them, respectivelydirect and
indirect, but both direct): The authority of the Church"has the
prerogative of an indirect jurisdiction on subject-matter which lies beyond its
own proper limits, and it mostreasonably has such a jurisdiction. It
could not act in its ownprovince unless it had a right to act out of it.
It could notproperly defend religious truth, without claiming for that
truthwhat may be called its pomaeria; or, to take another illustration,without acting as we act, as a nation, in claiming as our own, notonly
the land on which we live, but what are called Britishwaters. The
Catholic Church claims, not only to judge infalliblyon religious
questions, but to animadvert on opinions in secularmatters which bear
upon religion, on matters of philosophy, ofscience, of literature, of
history. . . It must of course beobeyed without a word, and perhaps in
process of time it willtacitly recede from its own injunctions. In such
cases thequestion of faith does not come in at all; for what is matter
offaith is true for all times, and never can be unsaid."

C. Their Degree Of Sanctity

If the directions coming from the jurisdictional power, thoughclosely
linked and ordered one to another, are not, on thataccount, all of equal
importance; if the divine assistance whichguarantees their truth, their
justice and their prudence is notalways and in every case infallible,
yet its message as a whole isholy, and even in secondary and particular
matters, in whichlapses may occur, it still remains holy; on the one
hand radicallyand in the majority of cases, since it represents the
applicationof good and prudent general laws; and on the other handabsolutely,
since the decisions by which it might come to commanda sin are annulled
in advance by the general laws of the Church.[830]

D. The Relation Between The Jurisdictional Teaching And The Charity Of The
Church

The message of the jurisdictional power is welcomed by the faithand
obedience of the faithful. It is cherished in the heart of theChurch
believing, loving, acting. Under one aspect it would becorrect to say
that it already supposes, in order to be fullyreceived by men, the full
collective outpouring of this caritasviae, which, like the soul in its
body, works from within to form,organize and vivify the whole Church,
the whole Kingdom of Godvisibly present among us. But under another
aspect it is thismessage itself that plays the primary part, since it is
for it toopen wide the ways on which the theological faith, the
affectivecharity, and the effective charity of all the faithful—in
otherwords, the contemplation and action of the whole Church, of thewhole
Kingdom of God among men—may march with sure step. In asense it is
first to the jurisdictional message (and in anothersense it is first to
Christian charity, which demands, welcomesand utilises this message)
that are due the order, the unity, theperfect proportion of the Church,
which sometimes astonishes evenher enemies, as the beauty of the camp of
Israel astonished theprophet Balaam in the desert.[831]

E. The Jurisdictional Power's Influence Direct On The Church And Indirect On
The World

It is therefore only at the point at which the jurisdictionalmessage
touches mankind that there is produced the full outflow,the full
collective, concerted, organic activity of Christian andsacramental
charity, which, like an inner spring of virtue,unfailingly animates,
sanctifies and spiritualizes the Church herebelow, the passible Body of
Christ, the Kingdom of God in ourmidst. But it would be gravely
erroneous to think that thedirections of the jurisdictional power are
content to act on theworld only directly, and only at the point where
they are openlyand visibly received. In manifesting divine truth with
uniquepower, they make their influence felt far beyond these limits.They
attain, by repercussion, to much wider circles. They help toenlighten,
sustain and save many of those who, without being inthe Church openly,
fully, in achieved act, belong to her alreadyhiddenly, imperfectly, in
initial act. And the more the culturalunification of races and peoples
progresses, so much the more doesspiritual influence and jurisdiction
tend to overflow and to pass far beyond the apparent and humanly discernible
limits of theChurch.